Leaving passengers behind, PIA flight takes off an hour before schedule

Claiming passengers were informed beforehand, airport and PIA officials give conflicting reasons for early departure.

PESHAWAR: National flag-carrier Pakistan International Airlines appears to have pulled up its socks a little too far after this week’s tragic Bhoja Air disaster that killed all 127 people on board.

On Monday, a PIA flight bound to Karachi from Peshawar took off an hour before it was scheduled to leaving some passengers behind at the provincial capital’s Baacha Khan International Airport.

The stranded passengers resorted to protest, after which they were accommodate on another Karachi-bound flight.

“The plane had left due to an onward connection at Jeddah at 7:40am, leaving behind 20 passengers in Peshawar,” an airport official told The Express Tribune on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media. He sought to dispel the impression that there was a technical fault that had caused the situation.

He claimed that most passengers had been informed of the change in schedule but some of them could not be reached via phone, leading to the inconvenient situation. “The [stranded] passengers were put on another flight for 8:30am.”

PIA spokesperson Sultan Hassan corroborated the claim that most passengers had been informed of the change beforehand. However, he had a different reason for the plane’s over-efficiency.

“It was a result of rescheduling of flights that had occurred due to the situation in the past three days. This flight was rescheduled the night before,” Hassan told The Express Tribune. He also said the plane was to fly on to Faisalabad, not Jeddah, from Karachi.

According to him, 10 to 15 passengers had missed the flight.