ISLAMABAD: Pakis­tan International Airlines (PIA) announced on Tuesday that it was resuming direct flights to London in March 2026, after a six-year hiatus.

In a statement, a PIA spokesperson said the national flag carrier was increasing its flights to the United Kingdom. He said the airline would operate four weekly flights from Islamabad to London from March 29, 2026.

He said the flights would be operated from Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 4. “The flights are being resumed after a long gap of six years,” he said.

The spokesperson further said that London was the airline’s “first-ever” internatio­nal destination and remained one of its most important routes.

He said that the natio­nal carrier was already operating three weekly flights to Manchester.

In June 2020, the Euro­pean Union Air Safety Age­­­­­ncy had barred PIA from operating in EU countries over safety concerns after a flight from Lahore to Karachi crashed near Jinnah International Airport, killing around 100 passengers.

The ban on flights followed the then-aviation minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan’s statement on the floor of parliament, where he termed pilots’ licences “dubious”.

The European agency lifted the ban after more than four years on Nov 28, 2024. In July 2025, the UK removed Pakistan from its Air Safety List, allowing Pakistani airlines to apply to operate flights in Britain.

In September, PIA received the go-ahead to resume direct flights to the UK after a gap of nearly five years. Subsequen­tly, the airline resumed flights to the UK, with flight operations to Manchester resuming in the first phase.

At the time, the airline had said it planned to extend operations to Birmingham and London as well.

Published in Dawn, December 31st, 2025