Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight on Sunday departed for Saudi Arabia leaving behind 70 Hajj pilgrims. According to PIA spokesman, the remaining passengers will depart for Saudi Arabia in the night. Earlier, PIA was accused of allegedly delaying the flights to favour the officials of Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) with an air safari tour. The Skardu-Islamabad flight was scheduled to take flight at 12:30pm sharp. However, what followed next was the delay of a long and exhausting four hours which troubled the passengers greatly. The flight coming from Islamabad that was bound to take the passengers back to Islamabad from Skardu was holding CAA officials and Gilgil-Baltistan senior Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz member Akbar Taban on board. Passengers travelling on this flight were displeased and furious on this abrupt delay and took to social media to express their anger. The reason for this strange incident? The airline had sold too many tickets and did not have any seats for the 70 passengers. They were informed of this development at the check-in counter. The airline’s management said that there were too many passengers so they had to leave some behind. However, the management said they will try to accommodate the passengers on the 10pm flight. But this didn’t pacify the offloaded passengers, who staged a protest at Jinnah International. Published in Daily Times, August 13th 2018.