ISLAMABAD: A bomb threat delayed a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) passenger flight bound for Dubai by four hours on Thursday, with officials clearing it to take off after searches found no explosive device on board.
The PIA flight was preparing for a scheduled 11:00am departure from Lahore when an anonymous caller rang the airport claiming there was a bomb on board.
"The plane has been thoroughly searched and no bomb was found, it has taken off at 3:00 pm," Hasan told AFP.
Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Pervez George said all threats had to be taken seriously although most turned out to be hoaxes.
Pakistan's aviation industry has been in the spotlight after a Boeing 737 from the private airline Bhoja Air crashed near Islamabad on April 20, killing all 127 people on board.
Last month, a PIA jet was forced to land shortly after takeoff from Karachi after a passenger made a hijack threat.
The state carrier is on the verge of going bust, but provides the only direct services from Pakistan to Britain, Europe and North America.
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Read the news and figure out who are the scum bags causing these problem. Instead our smart reader arguing about picture
@Shadytr33: precisely. they use old and often irrelevant stuff from the image library instead of inserting images from on-the-spot reporting. in other words they use fillers.
@Asif, @peace loving, dont you see it is written on the bottom of the photo that it's a file photo from reuters..?? and what has the picture have to do with the story ?
this is typical of et to use old and irrelevant pictures and graphics thinking the readers are fools.
The picture shown is of Boeing 777 jet, atleast put a picture of Airbus A310 as is written in the news article