LAHORE – Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) is shifting to a newPassenger Service System by September 5.

PIA has entered into a new partnership with a computer services giant andsolution provider HITIT after a competitive bidding process.

While the pretext for this decision is explained to be financial andoperational, experts believe that this shift is also a significant move inthe geo-strategic paradigm.

According to the sources, the current agreement with SABRE, an Americanproduct is expiring on Sep 18, 2018, after almost two decades and themanagement decided to select a new system through the PPRA Rules. However,the Global Distribution System’s (GDS) agreement is still going on with theSABRE.

Because PIA would have risked making its agents unhappy had it chosen toopt out GDS that abruptly. The GDS offers extra monetary benefits to salesagents which had more or less created a lobby amongst agents in favour ofGDS. In order to avoid a backlash from its sales agents PIA as for the timebeing continued with GDS however, it plans to opt out of it eventually,sources told.

The PIA entered into an agreement with SABRE with a vision of expanding itsflight operation as the system was designed for such use. However, thenational carrier could not materialize its policy of expanding its flightoperation which resulted in SABRE becoming more and more expensive for thecorporation for its contracting flight operations.

In addition to this, the PIA purchased additional components of SABRE forfinancial and inventory management like AIRMAX. However, did not use thosecomponents due to lack of capacity. Meanwhile, continued paying for thesecomponents.