FlyJinnah’s Lahore-Islamabad route is not attracting the kind of crowds the carrier would have hoped for. Do the flights make sense?

If you were to take the 7:30 AM flight from Lahore to Islamabad at any point this week you would notice a few things. The first would be that the flight is kind of affordable — around Rs 10,000 one way, which at current petrol prices is not significantly more than taking your own car would cost and is definitely cheaper than renting a cab.  The second thing you might notice is that the plane you board has the familiar red-white colours of FlyJinnah, but the livery emblazoned on the side of the Airbus A320 is that of AirArabia, not FlyJinnah. But perhaps the thing you would notice most of all is that most of the seats on the plane would be empty. 

Over the past 10 days (11th May to 21st May), Profit tracked the state of the daily Islamabad-Lahore and Lahore-Islamabad flights that FlyJinnah launched at the start of the month. Since airlines do not disclose their flight data, as is their right, we had to find different methods to cobble together how travellers are responding to this new offering.

Initially, our correspondents visited the airports to speak with FlyJinnah’s desk to ask how many seats were available. We also placed calls a few hours before the flights were due to take off to ask them how many people could be adjusted. The information desk and call centre declined to give exact numbers, but on each occasion said that out of the 174 seats available on the plane, more than 70 seats were empty. This was consistently the answer throughout the 10 days for the morning flights as well as the evening flights.

To get a more accurate measure, Profit reached out to people taking the flight and asked them to report back with how many seats were empty on the plane. On the 7:30 AM flight on the 12th of May, one passenger reported back that as per their count 60% of the seats were empty. On the flight from Islamabad to Lahore that evening, there were even fewer passengers. Passengers on different flights claimed on different days that 40-70% of the seats were empty.

Now, as far as passengers are concerned this sounds like a pretty sweet deal. The cost is cheap, the flight is quick, the route is scenic, and there are few feelings in life as sweet as having the seat next to you on a flight be unoccupied. 

But the question is, why did FlyJinnah introduce this route and does it make sense for them?  

Understanding the route 

The Lahore-Islamabad route is for a certain kind of passenger. There was a time when PIA regularly ran this route and the flights would be full early in the morning with bureaucrats, businessmen, politicians, lobbyists, and others that had business in Islamabad and wanted to be back in Lahore quickly. The concept was simple.