TAXILA: Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan has said the national carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), was planning to start direct flights to Australia.

Talking to mediapersons on Sunday, Mr Khan said initially two weekly flights would operate between Karachi, Lahore and Sydney, and later Islamabad would also be added.

He said as there were no direct flights between Pakistan and Australia, it took around 35 hours to reach the country with stopovers in between.

Mr Khan further said the national carrier had resumed flights to the Syrian capital Damascus after 22 years as well as to Malaysia and Iraq, adding that from next month, “we plan to start direct flights to Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, from Karachi and Lahore”.

The minister also revealed that PIA would be including more locations to its network and adding four narrow-body aircraft to its fleet on dry lease in March to increase flights operations.

“We plan to gradually expand the fleet of PIA from the current 29 to 49 by 2026; the fleet would comprise 16 wide body, 27 narrow body and 6 turbo propeller aircraft,” he said.

On the political front, Mr Khan said the government faced no threat from the opposition as it stood divided.

“There was no consensus between the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on the issue of long march,” he said, adding that if the opposition tabled a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Imran Khan, it would face the same fate as it experienced in the Senate.

Responding to another question, the minister said protecting people from the effects of global level price hikes was among the government’s foremost priorities, adding that developing countries had been hit the hardest from the rising prices at the international level.

Published in Dawn, February 28th, 2022