Foreign airlines cancel flights, Pakistani passengers suffer mental agony

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has taken notice of the large-scale flight cancellation and blamed foreign carriers for “overbooking”, saying the agency had not cancelled a single flight, reports Dawn News.

The airlines scheduled extra flights and took bookings to Pakistan presuming ease of travel restrictions by authorities. However, they had to cancel them when the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) maintained its travel curbs i.e. to allow 20 percent of the normal air traffic from all over the world with a few exceptions, the Pakistani newspaper reported.

The NCOC has increased the capacity for only direct international inbound flights from Europe, Canada, the United Kingdom, China, Malaysia and some other countries to 40 pc of the normal volume of passengers from July 1, the report added.

Several passengers were seen posting on Twitter their frustrations over flight cancellations.

Aniq Zafar, a Twitter user, posted: "My family has had flights cancelled twice in a span of a week @qatarairways and for now they aren’t able to adjust before July 26th."

In view of the outrage on social media, the CAA issued a statement to clarify its position, reports Dawn News.

A CAA spokesman told the newspaper on May 5 the CAA in compliance with NCOC directives had allowed foreign airlines coming to Pakistan to operate with 20 pc of the total capacity and this permission had now been extended till July 15.

“CAA has taken notice of the excessive booking by foreign airlines for Pakistan,” he said. “The responsibility of booking and suspension of flights lies on the airline concerned as CAA has nothing to do with cancellation or overbooking.”

Meanwhile, an official of Qatar Airways told Dawn some of its flights had been cancelled to comply with the NCOC’s restrictions.