LAHORE/KARACHI/RAWAL­PINDI: After spending over six weeks abroad, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is finally returning home on Saturday (today) in a special Pakistan International Airlines aircraft to be sent ‘empty’ to London to transport the PM and his ‘camp office’.

The PM left for London in the third week of May for his treatment from where he looked after key government affairs and even presided over a meeting of the National Economic Council, approved budgetary proposals, etc, via a video link.

On May 31, he underwent open-heart surgery. He stayed at the hospital for a couple of days and then shif­t­ed back to his London residence, where he was recuperating. Since then, he has been waiting for permission of doctors, who had disallowed his travel.

While the PIA announced on Friday that it had dedicated an aircraft to bring PM Sharif and his London camp office back home, it was Maryam Nawaz who disclosed on the social media that her father would be home on Saturday.

“Prime Minister will Insha’Allah be arriving tomorrow evening. Allah has been Kind. Indebted for your kind prayers & wishes,” she said in a tweet in the evening.

The PM’s daughter, whose Twitter postings were the sole reliable source of information about her father’s health when he underwent surgery and stayed in hospital for recovery, did not divulge any further details as to when and where the PM will land.

However, security sources told Dawn that the PM’s aircraft would land in his hometown Lahore in the evening.

The PM’s scheduled return in a special aircraft raised many eyebrows and sparked outrage on the social media.

While activists and supporters of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz started trending #WelComeNawazSharif on Twitter, #ReturnOfTheLooter was being trended by his detractors.

Defending dedication of an aircraft, a spokesman for the PIA said in a statement that due to the prime minister’s health issues, PM Office had partly been shifted to London where a camp office had been set up. “Now that the PM has recovered after his surgery and is allowed to travel, the whole camp office has to be shifted back to Pakistan. On PIA’s regular flights, so many seats were not available, due to which the only option was to depute a dedicated aircraft.”

The interior of the special aircraft, Boeing-777 that serves on the PIA’s North America route, underwent some changes — from the normal economy class to the VIP class having luxury seating and relaxing/sleeping arrangements. Except the crew members, there will be no passengers on board when the aircraft leaves for London.

The sources said that a number of routine flights of the national carrier would be delayed because of the dedication of Boeing-777.

They said that the per hour operating cost of the Boeing-777 came to around $20,000 (over Rs2 million) and the whole trip would cost between $400,000 and $480,000.

The sources said that the Boeing-777 aircraft were usually used for long-haul flights so some of the transatlantic flights would also be delayed and the crew stationed at the US destination would be staying there for at least one additional day and their stay would also cost additional expenses in dollars to the PIA.

However, PIA spokesperson Danyal Gilani insisted that there would be no loss to the PIA.

There will not be any significant delays in other flights due to the PM’s special flight as alternative arrangements had been made, he added.

Published in Dawn, July 9th, 2016