BAHAWALPUR: The Bahawalpur airport on Sunday handled the Multan passengers traffic due to the suspension of operation at Multan airport on Saturday night. According to PIA Station Manager Mansoor Ahmed Lodhi, the Bahawalpur airport facilitated the Multan and Karachi bound hundreds of passengers with the landing of incoming and outgoing flights instead of Multan.

On Saturday night, the Multan airport turned non-operational after a tyre of an aircraft burst during landing. Consequently, authorities alerted the Bahawalpur airport officials to handle traffic from Multan airport.

The PIA headquarters on Saturday night informed the local airport officials of the landing of an aircraft aboard technical aid crew bound for Multan airport to repair the damaged aircraft, but the plane could not reach from Karachi and did not land here. As a result the technical staff failed to reach Multan and the airport remained non-operational throughout the night and till filing of the story at 7.30pm on Sunday.

However, a PIA flight no.PK-330 (an Air Bus 320) with 60 passengers aboard besides the technical team landed at Bahawalpur airport on Sunday and the local airport officials dispatched them in buses to Multan.

Later, from Multan as many as 114 passengers bound for Karachi reached here in three buses. They were taken off by PIA flight No. PK-331 to Karachi.

According to airport sources, due to non-availibility of aircrafts i.e. ATRs in Islamabad on Sunday, the scheduled flight no.PK-657 Islamabad-Lahore-Bahawalpur and back flight no.PK-658 Bahawalpur-Lahore-Islamabad were cancelled, causing inconvenience to passengers who, the officials claimed, were accommodated through alternative arrangements.

Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2015

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