Updated on 16 January at 10am.
She had been waiting four years for this. Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) to resume flights to Europe following the lifting of its ban on services by theEuropean Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). The agency has also lifted its ban on Air Blue, another local carrier flying to Europe before 2020.
In June 2020, EASA suspended the operations of PIA and the other Pakistani airlines as a result of to the crash of a plane belonging to the national carrier between Lahore and Karachi. The accident highlighted serious shortcomings in the country's air safety, particularly in aircraft maintenance.
In the wake of the EASA decision, the UK aviation authorities had also blocked services to PIA.
The lifting of restrictions by the two civil aviation authorities should mean that PIA airlines can resume operations very quickly. Before the pandemic and the crash, PIA operated 17 routes to destinations in the EU and the UK.
At the moment, only London has a Western European route to Islamabad. British Airways operates 3 flights a week. Turkish Airlines is nevertheless Europe's largest operator, with 10 weekly flights to Islamabad. The two carriers account for a third of the number of frequencies offered between Pakistan and Europe before the ban...
Europe, an essential market
As the UK market is the most important due to the large Pakistani diaspora in the country, PIA would like to give priority to its routes from Islamabad and Lahore to London Heathrow, Manchester and Birmingham. The company will submit its application to the UK authorities.
But the lifting of the ban on PIAs also means, above all the return of flights to Paris CDGon 10 January, the first new route in the European Union. The airline connects the French capital to Islamabad with two flights a week, operated by Boeing 777-200ER.
Before the ban, in addition to Paris, PIA also served Barcelona, Copenhagen, Milan-Malpensa and Oslo. PIA's return to Europe should make the airline more attractive to investors. For many months, the Pakistani government has been trying to sell the airline... without success. It has to be said that the international market from Pakistan is dominated at 60% by Gulf carriers. With a virtual monopoly of the latter and Turkish Airlines as carrier 3 million passengers to and from Europe.
