Seats full, Pak airline flies extra people standing

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s state-run airline is investigating how seven passengers travelled from Karachi to Saudi Arabia while standing in the aisle of a flight, which has been described by authorities as a serious breach of air safety regulations.

The passengers were allowed to board the Pakistan International Airline flight to Medina on January 20 even though every seat was filled. The Boeing 777 had a total capacity of 409 seats, including jump seats for the staff, but carried 416 passengers.

The additional passengers were issued hand-written boarding passes, instead of computergenerated ones, for the threehour flight. The flight’s computer-generated list did not mention the seven passengers.

The matter was reported by the influential Dawn newspaper on Friday, prompting an investigation by the airline, which has been plagued by controversies and mounting losses in recent years. The extra passengers constituted a serious breach of air safety as their presence could have led to problems in the event of an emergency.

Passengers without seats would not have had access to oxygen masks in a contingency and could have caused congestion during a possible emergency evacuation.