Daily Times

A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight on Monday brought home 155 citizens stranded in Doha due to a wave of coronavirus-related flight cancellations in recent weeks.

“PIA’s relief operation to bring Pakistanis who got stranded because of cancellation of flights of other airlines is underway, and our first flight arrived this morning [on Monday] with 155 passengers from Doha,” PIA Spokesperson Abdullah Hafeez Khan said.

“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 need be.

“We have more flights from Middle East countries tomorrow,” Khan said.

“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 CAA said in a statement on Saturday, adding that ten flights would depart from the UAE, bringing home 3,394 passengers between July 5 and July 16.

Another 2,016 Pakistanis would be brought home from Qatar from July 6 to July 18, and 722 from Bahrain between July 9 and 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.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that in accordance with Prime Minister Imran Khan’s directions to help Pakistanis abroad, Ambassador of Pakistan in Kabul and the Embassy of Pakistan have made effective arrangements for around 4,000 Pakistanis stranded in Afghanistan due to closure of flights to Saudi Arabia, for their return to Torkham.

These Pakistanis are being provided decent places for temporary stay at the Embassy and provided food, buses and cash grant for their return to Torkham and travel to their home towns in Pakistan.