PIA flight narrowly avoids major accident after bird strike

Listen to article

A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight en route from Lahore to Dubai narrowly escaped a major accident after a bird strike. The incident occurred when the bird collided with the engine of the Airbus aircraft on flight PK 203.

The captain promptly contacted the air traffic controller and requested permission for an emergency landing. The aircraft, carrying over 150 passengers, was safely landed by the captain.

PIA's engineering team will be dispatched from Karachi via flight PK 304 to Lahore Airport for further inspection. The team will perform a boreoscopic inspection to assess any damage to the aircraft’s engine caused by the bird strike.

Earlier, PIA resumed its flights to the European Union (EU) and hoped to regain flight operations to the United Kingdom (UK) after a hiatus of over four years.

Sources revealed that the British Safety Committee was set to review PIA's request for resumption in a meeting on March 12.

The meeting would include the presentation of the latest audit reports from both PIA and the Civil Aviation Authority Pakistan. If approved, direct flights to the UK would be restored.

PIA's management remained optimistic about the approval and had prepared a plan to immediately resume flights to London, Manchester, and Birmingham upon receiving clearance.

A two-member PIA team had recently returned to Pakistan after evaluating preparations for operations in the UK.

The EU and UK had imposed a temporary ban on PIA in June 2020 after a revelation in the Pakistani parliament about pilots holding fake licenses. PIA’s flight operations to the EU were resumed on January 11.