RECORDER REPORT

KARACHI: Pakistan International Airline (PIA) has planned to operate new special flights commencing by next week for Algeria, Khartoum, Nairobi, Jeddah, Oman, Zurich, Amsterdam and Turkey to rescue stranded Pakistanis from these places.

According to details, on instructions of the minister for Aviation Ghulam Sarwar Khan, PIA is going to operate additional flights on sectors where large number of Pakistanis is still stranded and needs to be brought back.

New special flights will be commenced by next week for Algeria, Khartoum, Nairobi, Jeddah, Oman, Zurich, Amsterdam and Turkey to rescue stranded Pakistanis on these locations.

PIA spokesman said that people who have confirmed tickets and could not travel due to flight restrictions would now be re-accommodated on these upcoming flights and urged all such passengers to immediately contact PIA call centre and get their Pakistan contact numbers registered with them so that they could be contacted and adjusted accordingly or may be informed for any flight schedule change, confirmations or cancellations.

Furthermore, he said that there was an adverse feedback on fares of PIA, which though were unfortunate but were based on the high cost of operations. However, the same have been drastically reduced by PIA after CEO PIA Air Marshal Arshad Malik took personally notice of the matter. New fares are already updated in the system.

Needless to mention, the national flag carrier is already operating relief flights to London, Birmingham, Manchester, Toronto, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Kuala Lumpur since April 03, 2020 after the suspension of flight operations consequent to the corona outbreak. In addition, PIA also went to destinations which were not part of PIA’s regular network such as Chengdu in China, Dushanbe in Tajikistan, Tashkent in Uzbekistan, Baku in Azerbaijan, Baghdad in Iraq and Trabzon in Turkey.