A total of eighteen domestic and international flights encountered disruptions on Sunday, causing significant inconvenience to passengers who had meticulously planned their journeys to various destinations. The affected airports included Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, and Sialkot.
Lahore’s Allama Iqbal International Airport attributed the flight cancellations and delays to adverse weather conditions. Violent thunderstorms, accompanied by hail, had battered the metropolis the previous night and continued into the early hours of Sunday. These conditions rendered it impossible for several flights to land in Lahore, leading to their diversion to airports in Islamabad and Multan.
18 flights cancelled, delayed from or to Karachi, Lahore, Sialkot and Islamabad
Fly Baghdad, an airline operating flights to the Iraqi capital from Karachi, had to cancel two of its scheduled flights, IF-331 and IF-332. Additionally, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) had two domestic flights, PK-503 and PK-504, canceled—one from Karachi to Gwadar and the other from Gwadar to Karachi. Islamabad to Gilgit flights, including PK-601, PK-602, PK-605, and PK-606, were also on the list of canceled flights.
The cancellations extended beyond the national flag carrier in the federal capital’s airport. Both the Islamabad-Muscat PF-734 and Muscat-Islamabad flights of Air Sial experienced cancellations. Several other Air Sial flights were also affected, including Lahore to Dammam (PF-742 and PF-743), Karachi to Lahore (PF-143 and PF-144), Karachi to Islamabad (PF-121, PF-122, PF-125, and PF-126).
In addition to the cancellations, various flights across different airlines faced delays. Notable delayed flights included:
- SereneAir: Karachi to Jeddah (ER-811) with a delay of two hours and fifteen minutes, Lahore to Jeddah (ER-801) delayed by three hours, and a domestic Karachi to Faisalabad flight experiencing a significant delay of ten hours.
- Saudia: Lahore to Jeddah (SV-739) with a delay of three hours and fifteen minutes.
- PIA: Karachi to Lahore (PK-302) delayed by one hour and forty-five minutes, Karachi to Faisalabad (PK-340) rescheduled to 7:00 PM from its morning schedule, Lahore to Abu Dhabi (PK-263) delayed by three hours and twenty minutes, Sialkot to Muscat (PK-281) rescheduled for 4:30 PM after a three-hour delay, and Sialkot to Kuwait City experiencing a delay of two hours and forty-five minutes.
- airblue: Islamabad to Skardu (PA-251) facing a four-hour delay.
