By By our correspondent
PIA had applied in October this year for permission from the Dubai Civil Aviation as per an agreement between Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), an airline spokesman said on Thursday.
“Until Thursday, permission was not received by PIA to operate on this sector,” he said, adding that now due to Eid holidays the flight will not be able to take off.
“PIA is making alternative arrangements to carry 40 passengers already booked for the flight from Sialkot to Dubai and 70 passengers booked on the return flight.”
The delay in the grant of approval by Dubai’s department of civil aviation has spoiled PIA’s inaugural flight, he said.
Bilateral Air Services Agreement between Pakistan and the UAE allows designated airlines of Pakistan to operate unlimited frequencies from any city to Dubai.
Similarly, the designated airlines of UAE are entitled to operate unlimited frequencies between Dubai and Karachi.
Moreover, the airlines of UAE are allowed operation of 11 more frequencies per week to three conditional gateways Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.
“The other six emirates of UAE have never violated the bilateral air services agreement and have always granted permission for flights to all airlines of Pakistan.”
Though this is the first incident of delaying permission to PIA, the civil aviation authorities of Dubai have in the past denied Shaheen Air the permission to operate to Dubai.
Emirates airline is presently operating 28 weekly flights to Karachi and eleven flights to other gateways. It has never been refused permission to increase its flights to Karachi as allowed in the bilateral air services agreement.
Dubai’s carrier has been making efforts for gaining more traffic rights from Pakistan.
Aviation industry people say UAE carriers, which have prospered on the back of petrodollars, have inflicted heavy damages on PIA by dumping their excess capacity in Pakistan.
CAA has maintained all along that it won’t bar foreign carriers just because PIA is not able to compete with them.
However, now even German airline Lufthansa is fighting to enforce rights over passenger traffic from home country.