A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight from Karachi to Islamabad made a 'dip' at Sukkur on Saturday to pick up passengers in the absence of ATR planes that usually fly on that route. The airline earlier this week grounded all ATR planes in its fleet for examination.

"As ATRs are grounded, PIA had planned a dip at Sukkur to facilitate Sukkur-Islamabad passengers," PIA spokesman Danyal Gilani said in a statement.

The stopover of PK-368 "was planned ahead of time and all passengers were duly informed on the contact numbers they had given at the time of reservation", said the statement.

Because of the pit stop, the PIA flight which was scheduled to land at 12:55pm landed in the capital at 2:31pm.

PIA decided to ground all 10 ATR planes in its fleet on Monday after a decision by the Civil Aviation Authority to hold shakedown tests of the aircraft.

A day earlier, an ATR-42 flight of PIA grabbed headlines when its pilot aborted the take-off of the Multan-Karachi flight. The plane, carrying 48 people, was grounded because of some fault in one of its engines.

That incident had come five days after a PIA ATR aircraft went down near Havelian killing all 47 people on board.