ISLAMABAD: A special Pakistan International Airlines plane brought home on Monday 155 nationals stranded in Doha, Qatar due to a wave of coronavirus-related flight cancelations in recent days.
Thousands of nationals have been unable to return home due to flight cancelations by Middle Eastern operators inlcuding Emirates following a wave of travel bans in their countries.
The Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority announced on Saturday that the flagcarrier would operate special flights to bring home over 6,100 people stranded in sheikhdoms.
“PIA’s relief operation to bring Pakistanis who got stranded because of cancelation of flights of other airlines is underway, and our first flight arrived this morning [on Monday] with 155 passengers from Doha,” Arab News quoted PIA spokesperson Abdullah Hafeez Khan as saying.
“We have allocated eight special flights for Qatar, two for Bahrain and added 2,000 additional seats from the UAE to Pakistan,” he explained, adding “PIA is ready to add more flights” if the need arises. “We have more flights from Middle East countries tomorrow [Tuesday]”
“PIA flights were upgraded from Airbus to 777 (as per existing schedule) to take approximately 6132 passengers from Dubai, Shariah, Doha and Bahrain on 18 PIA flights,” the PCAA said in a statement issued Saturday.
Ten flights would depart from the United Arab Emirates, bringing home 3,394 passengers between July 5 and July 16. Another 2,016 people would be brought from Qatar between July 6 to July 18 and 722 from Bahrain from July 9 to July 11.
PIA will use Boeing 777 aircraft from its fleet as the wide-body airliner can accommodate more passengers than regular Airbus planes operated on these routes.
