After grounding of six ageing and over-used Fokker 27 aircraft, the national airliner, PIA, has started direct Islamabad-Peshawar-Chitral and Islamabad-Gilgit C-130 flights with the co-operation of the Pakistan Air Force, which has provided two C-130s to make daily flights to Chitral and Gilgit.
A C-130 aircraft, flown by PAF pilots and engineers, left for Peshawar and Chitral on Saturday morning with more than 80 passengers and the PIA crew as an alternative arrangement for decades-old Fokker planes.
Another PAF C-130 aircraft with 80 passengers on board landed at Gilgit and came back with Islamabad-bound passengers from Gilgit on Saturday.
Earlier, on these routes depending on the weather conditions, two to three Fokker 27 aircraft used to make daily sorties, but after crash of a Fokker at Multan, the federal government ordered the PIA to ground these accident-prone aircraft.
PAF sources told Business Recorder that this arrangement is expected to continue till PIA purchases/chartered its own aircraft which could land and take off in these mountainous and difficult areas.
They said the national airliner had already ordered seven ATR 42-500 twin turbo-prop passenger aircraft in November 2005 to replace the ageing Fokker-27; one of them has already arrived which is now flying on the Lahore-Multan-Bahawalpur route. Sources said that another is expected to join PIA fleet in September and the rest would be handed over to PIA in April next year.
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