RAWALPINDI: Pakistan International Airline will operate its inaugural flight from Islamabad to Manchester on Saturday after a long hiatus of about five years.

The national flag carrier is launching its flights to the United Kingdom after receiving the Third Country Operator (TCO) approval for flight operations.

In the second phase, the flight operation will be extended to Birmingham and London.

A grand ceremony will be held at Islamabad International Airport, which will be participated in by Defence Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif, Defence Secretary, CEO PIA, Director General Civil Aviation Authority, and Director General Airport Authority, and various diplomats from the British and French High Commissions.

The PIA’s inaugural flight PK-701 of Boeing 777 with approximately 280 passengers onboard will depart from Islamabad to Manchester at 12:05pm. A formal cake-cutting ceremony will be held on the occasion. The guests will be presented with commemorative shields by the PIA CEO.

All passengers on board the inaugural flight will also be presented with special gifts as a memento of this historic flight.

A lucky passenger who bought a PIA ticket through the ‘Go Lottery Digital App’ will be given a car in a draw. During the flight, passengers will also be presented with mobile phone gifts through a lottery conducted by PIA, said an official.

The restoration of this route is a strategic milestone for PIA. Such extraordinary initiative for passengers shows that the national airline is committed to providing the best possible service, he added.

The Pakistani flights were banned from flying to the European Union, the UK and the US in June 2020, after one of its Airbus A320 crashed in Karachi killing nearly 100 people on board.

The ban on flights followed the then aviation minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan statement on the floor of parliament, terming pilots’ licences “dubious”. However, the ban on PIA flights to Europe was lifted in November 2024.

Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2025