Pakistan International Airlines has denied a news item carried out by private news channel regarding an expensive Rolex wristwatch given to former Advisor to Prime Minister on Aviation Sardar Mehtab Ahmad Khan. PIA spokesperson Mashood Tajwar said that PIA is already under serious financial constraints and cannot even think of giving gifts like expensive watches to anyone. PIA only held the farewell function at the Gun Club that is a respectable location and not even a five-star hotel as the reporter for Dawn News alleged in his report. And only few officials were present at the farewell. The two items presented as gifts to the Advisor were a plane tail model (made out of plastic) and a souvenir crafted by the PIA Engineering team, which was made from part of a blade of a scrapped 737 engine. In addition, a tribute video was produced in-house that was also presented.
PIA spokesperson said that all the rest is fiction and lies with malicious intent. We hope that PIA will take this fake report and the channel to PEMRA council of complaints as it has done in other cases recently. Nobody should be allowed to play with the reputation of the national flag carrier.