Airlines of Pakistan

The Pakistan aviation industry started with Orient Airways, founded on 23 October 1946. Orient Airways commenced operations with four Douglas DC-3s on 4 June 1947 and ceased its operations on 11 March 1955 by merging into the Pakistan International Airlines Corporation (PIAC; founded in 1954) to become the national flag carrier of Pakistan called Pakistan International Airlines (PIA).

PIA remained the main operator since its founding till the early 1990s, although several private airlines initiated and ceased operations during this time. These included Pak Air (1948–49), Pakistan Mercantile Corporation (1948), Crescent Air Transport (1952–54) and Agricultural Aviation (1973–75), although the latter merged into ASSL which is still operational.

The privatisation reforms of the early 1990s and a flexible aviation policy led to the initiation of several private airlines, resulting in a major growth in the Pakistani aviation market with five new private airlines launching operations (Shaheen Air International SAI, Aero Asia International, Bhoja Air, Hajvairy Airlines, Raji Airlines, Schoen Air) and offering some competition to the national flag carrier.

The private airlines did very well to compete with the well established flag carrier, PIA, which was controlled by the government. However, this was not to last as the UN placed economic sanctions on Pakistan that caused the airline market to suffer. It caused two of the four airlines to file for bankruptcy and liquidate their assets. The airline industry remained quite stable with PIA developing a strong hold on the international and domestic market for many years. It was not until the early 21st century that the industry started to pick up again that allowed the entry of a new carrier in the market, Airblue, which launched operations with new state of the art aircraft. As of August 2007, the aviation market was developing and allowing more services and facilities to be inaugurated as well as the development of a brand new airport to be built for the capital at Fateh Jang.

As of July 2016, there are three active passenger airlines that operate both domestic and international flights from Pakistan.

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Wikipedia