PIA denies extra passengers forced to stand during flight

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan International Airlines, which is probing reports that seven extra passengers were allowed to travel to Saudi Arabia, has denied they stood in the aisles for the threehour journey, reports said.

PIA spokesman Danyal Gilani said media reports to this effect “are exaggerated and baseless. It is not possible for anyone to travel like that in an aircraft, regardless of the duration of the flight.”

But he said: “The matter pertaining to the travel of more passengers than the booked load...is under investigation,” adding the airline had ordered a “thorough probe into it, and all concerned are being questioned”.

“PIA is committed to ensure the safety of the passengers and cannot allow any incident to happen which compromises safety,” the influential Dawn newspaper quoted him as saying.

The media report said that although the B-777 plane was allowed to carry 409 passengers, there were 416 onboard flight PK743 to Madinah that day.

The state-run carrier is also investigating why no member of the cabin crew reported the matter to the airline management after the completion of the Karachi-madinah flight.

The airline is beset with a number of issues and in the past passengers have accused crew of overloading aircraft to accommodate staff and others, violating international aviation rules.

In this incident, which reportedly occurred in January, passengers with handwritten boarding cards were allowed on board after being adjusted by ground staff.

Captain Anwar Adil told Dawn that the passengers should not have been accommodated in the first place and if they were on the plane, the senior purser should have alerted him to this.

Adil said he learned about the extra passengers only after takeoff, by which point it was too late to turn around as this would have meant dumping fuel in order to land safely.

“I had already left and the senior purser (of the cabin crew) did not point out extra passengers before closing the aircraft door. Therefore, after takeoff, immediate landing back in Karachi was not possible,” he said.