Lahore: More than 20 staff members and officers of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) have been implicated in a major financial fraud following an audit that uncovered alleged irregularities in premium-seat bookings at Lahore’s Allama Iqbal International Airport, local media reported on Tuesday.
The financial irregularity was uncovered by the Lahore Finance and Audit Committee during an audit of May 2024 and 2025 records and over PKR 5,060,269 has been recovered so far through salary deductions from the accused employees and deposited into PIA’s account.
“PIA ground staff at Lahore airport were collecting additional charges directly from passengers after boarding or flight departure for premium, extra-legroom, and bulkhead seats on domestic and international flights. However, instead of depositing the fees into airline accounts, staff manually altered the system records to display these seats as standard/normal seats, pocketing the collected amounts,” Pakistan’s leading daily ‘The News’ reported.
Reports cited that the irregularities, identified during a review of booking and financial records, raise renewed questions about internal oversight, accountability and revenue protection at Pakistan’s national carrier.
Earlier this year, a report highlighted that the privatisation of PIA has been sold as a big reform to end decades of losses, but the opaque deal has turned out to be an example of institutionalised corruption.
The Pakistan government has parked around Rs 650 billion of PIA’s historic liabilities into a holding company, which insulates the buyer from huge accumulated losses. A clean operating entity has been sold to a private consortium led by Arif Habib Corporation on a headline valuation of about Rs 135 billion, of which only around Rs 10 billion translates into actual cash inflow to the state, while the rest is injected as equity into the airline itself, the article in the Colombo-based Asian News Post observed.
“PIA’s privatisation, in its current form, is therefore less a solution than a reallocation of burdens and benefits. The public continues to service a Rs 650 billion debt burden incurred through years of political interference, leakage and mismanagement. In return, it receives limited cash, a minority equity stake, and the hope that private managers will succeed where the state failed, even though the surrounding governance ecosystem remains largely unreformed,” it contended.
Over decades, taxpayer money built a sizeable PIA fleet, international routes, and valuable landing rights at key global hubs. Critics point out that these assets have been transferred at valuations below replacement cost, especially once adjusted for the network effects, brand value and regulatory privileges that such routes and slots confer in a congested aviation market. When the state absorbs liabilities, injects equity and then transfers these strategic assets at favourable terms to private hands, the transaction resembles a wealth transfer masked as reform rather than a fair market divestment, the article noted.
