RAWALPINDI: The United States of America and the United Kingdom will repatriate its citizens from Pakistan via 16 chartered flights, while the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has started its daily relief flights from Lahore and Islamabad for three cities of the UK offering discounted fare.

According to sources, the United States will operate six chartered flights to repatriate its more than 2,200 citizens from Islamabad and Karachi to Washington Dulles Airport during this week. None of the US citizens departing from Pakistan will be diplomatic staff.

This will be the second batch of chartered flights by the US authorities to bring back their citizens from Pakistan since the country has been under lockdown due to outbreak of Covid-19. Earlier, 785 American citizens had been repatriated to the United States via three chartered flights during last week from Islamabad and Karachi.

The US mission in Pakistan has started contacting its citizens to confirm seats on the US government’s chartered flights departing from Karachi and Islamabad for Washington Dulles Airport next week. The US authorities have intimated to Americans that they would be final flights arranged by the US government. If seats in these flights are declined, although these flights are not free, then they will have to stay in Pakistan until the commercial flight operation is resumed.

PIA announces daily flights for UK on discounted fare

According to sources, it would cost approximately $1,000 from Karachi and $1,450 from Islamabad per person.

The US embassy would establish their facilitation service counters in the concourse area of the airports in coordination with airport managers concerned. At both Karachi and Islamabad airports, Pakistani health authorities may conduct health screening and deny boarding to any passenger on observing fever or flu-like symptoms, the US authorities informed their citizens.

On the other hand, the Pakistan government has granted permission to the UK to operate 10 chartered flights to repatriate 2,500 stranded British citizens from Pakistan — seven flights of Qatar Airways chartered by the UK authorities would operate from Islamabad while the remaining three will operate from Lahore. The flights are scheduled to start from April 20 and will continue for seven days.

Following a request from the British High Commission, Islamabad, for chartered flights to repatriate British nationals, the ministry of foreign affairs directed the Aviation Division to facilitate the operation of chartered flights at Islamabad and Lahore airports. The flight operation would continue from April 20 to 26 from the Islamabad airport while one flight per day from the Allama Iqbal International Airport, Lahore, from April 21 to 23.

All the chartered aircraft will be observing the standard operating procedure (SOPs) set out by the health authorities of the UK. Due to quarantine arrangements put in place at Pakistan’s airports, no crew members or passengers would be disembarking the aircraft on landing. The flights would land at airports in London and Manchester.

The British High Commission thanked Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi for giving approval for a series of repatriation flights for UK nationals.

Special relief flights

Meanwhile, the Pakistan International Airlines will start its special relief flights to UK on Sunday (today), under the new plan of operating daily flights from Islamabad and Lahore for London, Manchester and Birmingham.

The PIA has also offered special discounted one-way fare enabling large number of citizens to avail the travel opportunities.

PIA spokesman Abdullah Hafeez said on Saturday that following popular demand of expats intending to travel to and from Pakistan, the national carrier will operate daily flights from Islamabad and Lahore for three network points in the UK: London, Manchester and Birmingham.

He said this came after the PIA launched massive operations to dispatch thousands of stranded UK citizens on April 4. However, due regulated inbound flow of travelers consequent to Covid-19 pandemic set forth by the government of Pakistan, despite PIA’s earnest desire, it could not fly back desired number of diaspora to Pakistan, which had huge impact on the commercial viability of the flights as well.

He said necessary permissions had been sought by the PIA management from the government to operate these flights while fulfilling all health and safety requirements set by respective agencies of both the countries.

The PIA contact centre would be contacting the people who had already submitted re-confirmation requests, only after which customers were requested to approach PIA offices if required. For fresh bookings, passengers could visit PIA offices or the PIA website, he said.

The spokesperson added that following demand of all the stranded passengers to reduce the fares on humanitarian basis, hence the PIA had offer special discounted fare of Rs110,000 or GBP 525 one way fare enabling large number of citizens to avail the travel opportunities.

The PIA flight carrying over 200 stranded Pakistanis in Jakarta landed at Jinnah International Airport on Saturday night, the spokesman said.

Published in Dawn, April 19th, 2020