At least 214 passengers stranded in Guangzhou, China, since July 29 finally reached Pakistan on Monday via a special Shaheen Air International (SAI) flight.

The SAI flight NL-891 landed at Lahore airport carrying 185 adults and 29 children, including 2 infants, DawnNewsTV reported.

Earlier in the day, the Foreign Office in its statement claimed credit for resolving the crisis, saying that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan's Embassy in Beijing and Consulate General in Guangzhou played an active role in this.

The issue started when the CAA suspended the SAI flight operations, except Haj flights, because of non-payment of its dues of over Rs1.5 billion.

On July 29, the SAI flight to Guangzhou was cancelled and over 300 passengers were left stranded at the Chinese airport.

Later, some passengers were refunded their tickets, while some others were transferred to hotels and provided food, etc.

Chief Justice Saqib Nisar, taking notice of media reports, had ordered immediate repatriation of the passengers.

The apex court had taken notice of the issue that as many as 300 Pakistanis — some of whose visas were about to expire or had expired — had been trapped in Guangzhou for days on account of their flights being cancelled.

The CAA gave special permission to the SAI to send a plane to bring back the passengers. But on inspection the CAA engineers found out that the aircraft being sent was faulty and declared it “non-airworthy”.

The SAI planned to bring the passengers through a chartered flight and also approached the PIA. The SAI would be saving money now as hiring a chartered flight or bringing the passengers through other airline would have been relatively costlier than using its own aircraft.

— With additional input by Naveed Siddiqui.