KARACHI: Pakistan International Airlines is launching direct flights from Lahore to Paris, with the first flight taking off on June 18, the national carrier said in a statement on Thursday.
PIA resumed flights to Europe in January after a four-and-a-half-year ban was lifted by EU regulators. A flight of the state-owned airline, plagued by a history of deadly crashes and a pilot license scandal, took off from Islamabad for Paris on Jan. 10, becoming the only carrier to offer a direct route to and from the European Union.
“PIA’s first flight from Lahore to Paris will take off on June 18,” the airline said. “A weekly flight from Lahore to Paris will take off directly on Wednesday.”
PIA is already operating two weekly flights from Islamabad to Paris and would “soon” launch flights to other cities in Europe, the airline said.
Debt-ridden PIA was banned in June 2020 from flying to the EU, United Kingdom and the United States, a month after one of its Airbus A-320s plunged into a neighborhood of Karachi, killing nearly 100 people.
The disaster was attributed to human error by the pilots and air traffic control, and was followed by allegations that nearly a third of the licenses for PIA pilots were fake or dubious.
On November 29, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency announced it had lifted the ban on EU flights.
PIA still remains barred from flying in the UK and the United States.
