Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) on Monday announced to operate 11 extra Boeing 777 flights from November 21st to November 30th, 2016, following high demand for Umrah. According to details, these flights will be operated from Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Multan. These flights are in addition to the four additional weekly flights to Jeddah that have already been added to PIA's winter schedule which was adopted at the start of November, taking the total number of weekly Jeddah flights from 21 to 25, adding a weekly capacity of more than 1000 passengers.
This is the result of an aggressive sales campaign launched by the Marketing Department of PIA to proactively sell Umrah flights two months ago. During meeting held here on Monday, CEO PIA Bernd Hildenbrand said that Umrah operation was top priority for the airline and all efforts were being made to facilitate the passengers. PIA has also obtained additional slots from Saudi Civil Aviation Authority (GACA), for the whole Umrah season, so that more capacity is available with PIA in case of increasing demand.