Choppers over Pakistan

When U.S. oil crews used helicopters to fly to remote drilling sites in Pakistan eight years ago, the Pakistanis were so intrigued by the strange machines that the pilots had to keep their rotor blades turning while on the ground to hold back the curious crowds. Last week Pakistanis were not only staring at helicopters, but flying in them too. Pakistan International Airlines has started a helicopter service that will eventually link 20 east-Pakistan towns in the world's most extensive helicopter network. In a land where travel is made slow and difficult by hundreds of marshes and rivers, the three Sikorsky twin-turbine helicopters will reduce travel time dramatically: the 25-hour river trip that is now the shortest way between Dacca and Chalna will be cut to 45 minutes by air, the 22-hour surface trip from Dacca to Faridpur to 17 minutes.

The ambitious helicopter service is the latest of a series of breakthroughs by Pakistan's small but surprisingly strong and aggressive airline. Playing both sides of the Sino-Soviet split, PIA this summer became the first foreign airline (besides Russia's Aeroflot) to gain landing rights in Red China, and the first foreign airline to win the right to fly through Moscow on the Europe-to-Asia run.

Founded as a nationalized company in 1955 from the remnants of a rundown private airline, PIA ran up heavy financial losses and a horrendous safety record until Field Marshal Ayub Khan, after coming to power in 1958, installed a Pakistan Air Force commodore as PIA's boss. Commodore Nur Khan (no kin) fired seven senior captains, enforced strict discipline and turned PIA into one of the few nationalized airlines that make a profit. Khan gets no government subsidy and brooks no government meddling, runs PIA with a maximum of free enterprise.

In a part of the world where domestic airline service is often shoddy, Khan dressed his stewardesses in fetching shalwar pantaloons, improved the service and the food. One of the few world-airline chiefs who can fly his own jets --and sometimes does--Khan has increased PIA's fleet to 20 planes and extended routes until they now stretch from Rangoon to New York. But he is proudest of PIA's vital role in linking Pakistan's divided nation--separated by 1,000 miles of India--and in bringing the advantage of modern transportation to a backward land. "Just think," he says: "many of the farmers flying in our planes have never worn shoes."

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