RAWALPINDI: The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) will partially resume its flights to the United Kingdom from Aug 14 with a hired plane.

PIA spokesman Abdullah Hafeez said on Wednesday that an agreement had been signed between Portugal’s airline and the national carrier.

He said the PIA would operate flights with an Airbus A330, having a seating capacity of more than 300 passengers.

“The PIA has hired a plane and crew from a European company to operate flights using PIA call sign and slots,” he said, adding: “Due to public demand, the national flag carrier is resuming its flights.”

The plane would have economy and business classes with comfortable seating capacity, he said.

Aircraft hired from European company

Mr Hafeez said that passengers would be able to travel to London, Manchester and Birmingham from Pakistan under the new arrangement.

He said that social distancing would be strictly observed in all the flights.

The spokesman said a PIA flight, PK-9702, would depart for Islamabad from Manchester with 250 passengers on Aug 14.

On August 15, PIA flight PK-9785 will depart from Islamabad for London.

He said that booking of seats had been started and all seats had been booked for the first flight.

The spokesman said that the airline would facilitate passengers with 45kg of baggage per passenger on the flights.

He said that after the suspension of PIA flights to the UK, other airlines had increased fares and it was expected that after the resumption of PIA flights, fares of other airlines would also come down.

Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2020