The mantra “PIA kee service kharab say kharab tar hote jaa rahe hai” has long been a standard of domestic travellers on the countries largest airline. At first, i was a bit hesitant to accept this on face value alone, since no untoward incident had happened to me or the passengers around me in quite sometime.

The was the past, now however i am largely inclined to change my mind due to the following incidents.

Incident 1:  

They dont let me sleep anymore!! I mean what the hell yaar! if a passenger is asleep on the flight, leave him be instead of rudely awakening them and demanding they have their food! Damnit! i dont want food! i want sleep!!! Do you know how hard it is to go back to sleep once u’ve been jarred awake!!!

Well, not really an incident rather than a rant, but it peeved me to no end. Twice while on PIA flight, i was rudely jarred awake from my deep slumber and forced a meal upon. And once, it was just sandwiches! I mean, i would rather sleep!

Incident 2:

Imagine you’ve just finished with a sandwich the airline decided to grant you with, and now waiting for a coffee to wash the dry crumbs from the inside of your throat, the air-host cames with a coffee kettle, and asks you to put the cup on his tray so he can pour it. Just as you pick the filled cup of his tray, you notice the coffee level (which was half a cup to begin with) going even further down. Before you can consciously make a educated guess as to why its happening, the cup gets empty, and your starched brown cotton shalwar kameez becomes even a darker shade of brown with unsightly coffee stains around the groin area! Thanks to the moderate hot coffee served onboard these flights, you resist the urge to scream in pain and instead grip the side bar with all your might, and your sense of decency prevents you from shouting at the poor flight attendant who is looking horrified at what just happened to you, while apologizing profusely!

The culprit? A big hole at the bottom of the damn coffee cup!! This happened to the poor guy in the seat next to me on the flight back to isb to khi (PK-369) on June 28th 2007. I cant even imagine the horror of walking around with that stain through the airport area and back to wherever he lived.

Incident 3:

If you ever get ground-sick of the, well, ground when you are 36,000 feet in the air, fly PIA. The courteous food preparation service gives special consideration to ensure that you do not miss the hard concrete roads of the city life by presenting you with a souvenir with your meal. A hard, shiny black stone! And to add to the surprise of the moment, they don’t tell you its coming, they just put it right in the middle of your food!! I think they must be learning something from the cereal industry with the ‘free gift inside’ routine.

Idiots! I almost put a tooth out biting into it! (Happened on flight PK306 inbound to lhr from khi – July 1st).