Thanks for the update. Indeed the fair has increased recently. I am just shocked and need time to recover after finding out the latest nonsense by PIA. When I was in Pakistan just few months ago, I checked Air tickets on multiple occasion and the fair for Lahore/Islamabad to Karachi was showing as 5500 fixed price for any day of my selection and now after the prices of oil dropped by 50%, PIA has managed to increase fair by many-fold. The latest prices I checked on PIA website states it's 11,000 to 19,000 for single journey and around 30,000 rupees for return journey from Karachi to Lahore.
The funny thing is, I bought a ticket for £396 (60,000 rupees) from London to Bahrain (6 hours) and Bahrain to Lahore (4 hours), back to London via Bahrain and despite taking the pleasure of International flight for 20 hours, Gulf is still making money and here PIA is charging 30,000 for mere domestic flight of 2 hours.
Thanks for the information SURB. Yeah it might be worth for many people in that case, the problem is air-tickets are way too expensive in Pakistan so the railways can loot money from its passengers. I am not sure about the cost of local buses/coaches but 5000 rupees is like a month income for poor people and I wonder if a couple travelling alongside 2 children would ever be able to afford it.
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That means this service is meant not for the ordinary Pakistani but the rich and mighty and the feudal landlords only! But then they would rather take a flight to Karachi from Islamabad and save 23 hours!
