Pakistan allows Indian plane to make emergency landing at Karachi airport on humanitarian grounds

KARACHI: An Indian airliner made an emergency landing at Karachi's Jinnah International Airport on Tuesday after a passenger fell sick during the flight.

The plane with flight number 6E1412, run by the IndiGo airlines, was travelling from Sharjah to the Indian city of Lucknow.

The plane had entered Pakistani airspace at around 4:00am via Iran when the passenger fell ill, said Civil Aviation Authority sources.

Once the passenger fell ill, the captain reached out to the air traffic control and asked for an emergency landing on "humanitarian grounds" in Karachi.

Once the request was received, the airline was directed to make an emergency landing at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport at 5:30am.

Sources, however, said that the 67-year-old passenger, Habibur Rehman, had already passed away on the plane before landing in Karachi.

The Pakistani medical team said that the cause of death of the passenger was cardiac arrest.

Once the doctors officially declared Rehman dead and the medico-legal formalities were completed, the jet took off for the Indian city of Ahmedabad at 8:36am from Karachi.