Shaheen Air International (SAI) has said that its flight will leave late Sunday night for Guangzhou, China, to bring back scores of Pakistani passengers who have been left stranded following the cancellation of the airline’s flight earlier on July 29.

The SAI flight NL-892 will leave from Lahore at 2am and is expected to reach Guangzhou at 11am [CST] on August 6, read a statement issued by Shaheen Air. The flight NL-891 will return to Pakistan on Monday at 6pm local time, it added.

In an announcement on Sunday, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) spokesperson said the objection raised by the authority with regard to the fitness of the SAI plane — scheduled to carry back home the stranded passengers — has been addressed.

“The required hosepipes have arrived from abroad and are presently in process of customs clearance and consequently will be fitted in due course enabling the carrier to fly without any sort of risk,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying.

Besides, the CAA reminded that due to Shaheen Air’s failure to clear dues amounting to Rs1.5 billion the airline had been prohibited to utilise facilities and services offered by the authority. “However, on purely humanitarian grounds it [SAI] has been allowed to carry back the passengers who had booked their seats with SAI, prior to the imposed ban,” read the CAA statement.

On Friday, Chief Justice Saqib Nisar had taken notice of reports that hundreds of Pakistanis are stranded in China because of the mismanagement of Shaheen Air, following which the CAA allowed SAI to operate a special flight to bring the passengers back home.