A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight from Lahore to Kuala Lumpur was diverted to Karachi due to technical reasons that developed mid-flight early Monday.

PIA spokesman Danyal Gilani said upon landing in Karachi, the aircraft was replaced with an alternate plane before flight PK-898 took off for the Malaysian capital at 4:00am local time.

"[The flight was] diverted due to technical reasons," he told Dawn.com, and did not confirm media reports alleging "hydraulic pipes had burst".

He said the airline diverted the plane to Karachi instead of landing in KL as it did not want the plane to be stranded in Malaysia. It was diverted to Karachi as a "precautionary measure" because PIA's engineering maintenance station is situated there, Gilani added.

A map on the plane tracking site FlightAware shows that after taking off from Lahore at 12:56am, the flight was enroute to Malaysia over India when it diverted towards Karachi.

As a result of the diversion, the PK-898 which was scheduled to land in Kuala Lumpur at around 10am landed at 2:14pm.

PIA to operate 6 ATR flights on Monday

PIA will operate a total of six ATR flights today, the airline said in a press release.

"These flights include PK-605 (Islamabad-Gilgit), PK-606 (Gilgit-Islamabad), PK-249 (Islamabad-Kabul), PK-250 (Kabul-Islamabad), PK-681 (Islamabad-Multan) and PK-682 (Multan-Islamabad)."

On Sunday, the airline operated four flights of C-130 aircraft, obtained from the Pakistan Air Force, for Gilgit and Chitral from the Benazir Bhutto International airport.

Later in the evening, the airline operated Islamabad-Multan-Islamabad flights on an ATR plane after its clearance in the shakedown test currently underway.