KARACHI, Nov 18: Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) will launch its Haj flights operation from Dec 26, and complete it within 31 days.

This was stated by Pakistan International Airlines Director Marketing Kamran Hasan during an informal talk with Dawn at the Iftar party the national flag carrier held on Wednesday for mediamen.

In reply to a question, he said PIA had acquired two 747 on lease from Orient-Thai airlines this year to supplement its fleet to complete the Haj operation in time.

He said, this year over 113,000 pilgrims of the regular scheme and 10,000 under the sponsored scheme would be flown to Jeddah.

Mr Hasan said the Haj flights would start operation from Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta while the fifth station would be Islamabad.

According to a schedule, 71 flights would be operating from Karachi, 75 from Lahore, 62 each from Peshawar and Quetta and 58 from Islamabad.