Singapore Airlines to stop flying to Pakistan from February due security concerns

Yet another foreign airline is leaving Pakistan, most probably because of security concerns.

Singapore Airlines, the flag-carrier airline of Singapore, has informed the Civil Aviation Authority of Pakistan it will stop the 3 flights a week from Singapore to Lahore and Karachi from February 17, 2010.

A number of leading foreign airlines have already either cut back their operations in Pakistan or stopped flying to that country altogether because of safety concerns, hitting further the country’s declining commercial-aviation industry that has been suffering from deteriorating security as well as the global economic recession.

Junaid Amin, director-general of Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority, has been quoted by the media as saying that it is “very sad” that Singapore Airlines is stopping flying to Pakistan. According to Amin, though Singapore Airlines maintains that its services to Pakistan are not profitable, the “real reason” is the security-related threat.

British Airways, the national airline of the United Kingdom, had stopped its flights to Pakistan in 2008, only a few months after Lufthansa, the flag-carrier airline of Germany, cut back its flights to Karachi.

In addition, carriers based in many countries in Middle East reduced their operations in Peshawar, in north-western Pakistan, in 2009 following a suicide car-bomb attack on a five-star hotel in which the crews of the airlines stayed.

According to a source in Pakistan’s aviation industry, the recent spate of bombings and suicide attacks by the Taliban across Pakistan have kept off the small number of business travellers and tourists who visited the country.

Provisional figures given out by the Civil Aviation Authority of Pakistan show that the total air traffic of Pakistan increased to 14.1 million passengers in fiscal 2008-09 from 14 million passengers a year ago. However, most of this growth in the number of air passenger came from international traffic. The number of domestic passengers, in fact, declined from 6.6 million to 6.3 million during the period.

Out of a total of 42 airports that Pakistan has, only 18 airports are functional, and as few as 9 airports are equipped to handle international flights

Farooq Rehmatullah, former director-general of Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority, has remarked that “negative travel advisories” for Pakistan given out by foreign countries have played a major role in the decline in the country’s international traffic. To make matters worse, Pakistan has done little to promote growth of domestic aviation, according to Rehmatullah.

The Pakistani media quoted Farooq Rehmatullah as commenting that Pakistan’s civil aviation will continue to suffer till a comprehensive policy that supports development of infrastructure, such as airports in rural areas, is put in place. Till two years ago, only 8% of the total population of Pakistan had stepped into a plane in their lifetime, Rehmatullah said.

Singapore Airlines, a leading airline in Asia, operates a hub at Changi Airport in Singapore. It mainly operates services to South Asia, South-East Asia, East Asia, and Australia.