Peshawar's Bacha Khan International Airport was on Thursday shut down for large body airplanes till June 4 due to repair work being done on the taxiway.

According to an airport official, the repair work was necessary as the taxiway had become 'puffy' due to extreme heat.

To fix the 'puffiness', the official said, the facility has been partially closed for usage for the next five days and will resume routine operations by June 5.

As a result, between now and June 4, the flights that were to take off from or land in Peshawar will instead have to be taken from the newly constructed Islamabad International Airport.

The temporary closure does not affect flight timings, sources told DawnNewsTV.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said that passengers of affected flights are being informed on the contact numbers they had provided at the time of booking.

A CAA official also offered his apologies to passengers for any inconvenience that the temporary closure of the airport may have caused to them.

It is pertinent to mention here that the Bacha Khan International Airport recently underwent expansion and renovations, with the 'improved' facility inaugurated by erstwhile prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on May 23.

Like the new Islamabad airport, the Bacha Khan International Airport had also been inaugurated prematurely. Its expansion is not scheduled to be complete till December 2018.

“The CAA and the contractor were under immense pressure to at least complete the facelifting of one portion so that it could be inaugurated by the prime minister before the completion of his tenure in the office,” a source had told Dawn at the time of inauguration.