KARACHI: The dispute over payment of Rs1.5 billion arrears between the Civil Aviation Authority and the Shaheen Air International went a step further as the CAA stopped two SAI flights on Thursday.

The flights stopped at the Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore were NL 768 Lahore-Muscat and NL 892 Lahore-Canton.

SAI representative Zoheb Hassan in a statement criticised the CAA action and said it was against the Sindh High Court order asking the authority not to stop the SAI operations if it continued to pay an instalment of Rs 100 million after every 10 days as agreed earlier. He claimed that SAI was making the payments.

Responding to Dawn queries, CAA spokesperson Pervez George said that since the SAI had not been making the payments and incorrectly interpreting the SHC decision, the authority as announced earlier was stopping international flight operations of the airline, except to Saudi Arabia. The SAI’s domestic operations were continuing normally, he added.

A few days earlier, the CAA had announced that since the SAI had not been making the payments, its international operations, except to Saudi Arabia, would be stopped after July 16.

The SAI had approached the high court which ordered that the airline’s operations should not be suspended if it continued to pay the instalments.

Published in Dawn, July 20th, 2018