Tag: flights

  • More than 4500 flights cancelled as Omicron impacts flight crews

    Over 4500 flights have been cancelled around the world and thousands more delayed due to the outbreak of the highly infectious Omicron variant of coronavirus, reports Al Jazeera.

    At least 2,000 flights were cancelled worldwide on Christmas Day.

    According to the tracking website flightaware.com, 616 flights originating from or headed to the United States (US) airports were cancelled and more than 8,000 were delayed.

    Pilots, flights attendants and other staff have been calling in sick or having to quarantine after exposure to Covid, forcing international airlines (Lufthansa, Delta, United Airlines) to cancel flights during one of the years peak travel periods.

    United Airlines who cancelled 185 flights on Christmas eve, in a statement, said, “The nationwide spike in Omicron cases this week has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation.”

    Earlier this week, it was reported that the rapidly spreading Omicron variant is the dominant Covid strain in the US, representing 73 per cent of sequenced cases.

  • PIA plane flies with only one passenger on board

    Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flew its plane from Islamabad to Manchester with only one passenger on board. According to reports, the plane which had a capacity of 371 passengers carried only one passenger to the destination.

    While Geo News has reported that the flight took off from Islamabad, journalist Murtaza Ali Shah said that the plane flew from Manchester to Islamabad.

    In the video posted by Shah, a PIA’s staffer, while pointing towards other empty 370 passenger seat, remarks that the passenger on board is the “lucky” one. The only passenger on the flight was a native of Gujrat.

    Read more – Imran govt likely to rid PIA of Rs500 billion debt

    Meanwhile prominent aviation journalist Tahir Imran Mian said PIA’s flight was not the only one that flew empty.

  • Indian woman takes lover on tour to Australia on husband’s passport

    Indian woman takes lover on tour to Australia on husband’s passport

    A 36-year-old woman in India allegedly took her lover on a tour to Australia on a passport forged in her husband’s name in January. One of the married couple’s children studies in Australia.

    The two were supposed to return in March but due to the national lockdown, all international flights to India were suspended so they got stuck and returned home on August 24.

    The woman’s husband works in Mumbai, has registered a complaint at a police station accusing his wife of having an illicit relationship with the co-accused, Sandeep Singh, 36.

    He has accused Sandeep of forging documents to get a passport in his name.

    Superintendent of Police, Jai Prakash Yadav, has ordered registration of an FIR on the husband’s complaint and an investigation into the matter by a local intelligence unit (LIU).

    According to the complainant, he has been working in Mumbai for the past 20 years and occasionally visits his wife, who lives in their farmhouse and looks after his ancestral land.

    “When I returned to Pilibhit on May 18, my wife was not at home. I came to know from Sandeep’s family that both had gone to Australia. To find out whether Sandeep forged documents to obtain a passport in my name to visit Australia, I purposely applied for a passport on August 24 at the Bareilly-based passport office. Then I found out from the passport authorities that a passport in my name had already been issued on February 2, 2019,” he said.

    The SP said Gajraula police and LIU inspector Kanchan Rawat would investigate how a passport in the name of the complainant was issued despite identity-checking at multiple levels.

  • New report suggests chances of catching COVID-19 on a flight are low

    New report suggests chances of catching COVID-19 on a flight are low

    A new report published in Bloomberg has said that the chances of catching coronavirus while flying are very low. Despite the known dangers of crowded, enclosed spaces, planes have not been identified as the spots of so-called superspreading events, at least so far.

    Arnold Barnett, a professor of management science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has been trying to calculate the probabilities of catching COVID-19 from flying. 

    He’s factored in a bunch of variables, including the chances of being seated near someone in the infectious stage of the disease, and the odds that the protection of masks that is now mandatory in most flights.

    He accounted for the way air is constantly renewed in airplane cabins, which experts say makes it very unlikely for a passenger to contract the disease from people who aren’t in their immediate area — their row or the person across the aisle, the people sitting in front of them or the people behind.

    What Barnett came up with was that we have about a 1/4300 chance of getting a virus on a full 2-hour flight — that is, about 1 in 4300 passengers will pick up the virus, on average. The odds of getting the virus are about half that, 1/7700 if airlines leave the middle seat empty. Barnett has posted his results as a not-yet-peer-reviewed preprint.

    The odds of dying of a case contracted in flight, he found, are even lower — between 1 in 400,000 and 1 in 600,000 — depending on the age and other risk factors. To put that in perspective, those odds are comparable to the average risk of getting a fatal case in a typical two hours on the ground.

    University of Massachusetts biology professor Erin Bromage says he is flying every week, as he advises federal, state and district courts on how to reopen while minimizing risks. 

    Bromage says that the air exchange system in planes is better than in hospitals, with the air in the cabin being completely replaced 30 times every hour. He agrees with MIT’s Barnett, though, that it’s possible to transmit the disease to or from your close neighbours.

    He and Barnett both suggested that customers should, if possible, choose an airline that promises to keep the middle seat empty. 

  • Europe bans PIA

    Europe bans PIA

    • UK, which is no longer a part of the EU since after Brexit, has also banned certain PIA flights

    Amid the controversy around the alleged fake licences of hundreds of Pakistani pilots, operations of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) in Europe were on Tuesday banned for six months by the European Union Air Safety Agency (EASA).

    According to a spokesperson of the national carrier, EASA has suspended PIA’s authorisation to operate in European Union member states for six months effective July 1, 2020 at midnight.

    A statement from the national carrier added that PIA would discontinue all its flights to Europe temporarily.

    All passengers booked on its flights to European destinations will have the option to either extend their bookings to a later date or get a full refund.

    “PIA is in contact with EASA to allay their concerns and to take necessary corrective measures along with filing the appeal against the decision,” the press release said.

    The national flag carrier said it “sincerely hopes that with reparative and swift actions taken by the Pakistani government and PIA management, earliest possible lifting of this suspension can be expected”.

    Meanwhile, according to journalist Murtaza Ali Shah, United Kingdom (UK), which is no longer a part of the EU since after Brexit but remains subject to EU law, has also suspended PIA flights from and to Birmingham, Heathrow in London, and Manchester with immediate effect.

    “The UK Civil Aviation Authority is required under law to withdraw PIA’s permit to operate to the UK pending EASA’s restoration of their approval that it meets international air safety standards,” the journalist quoted a spokesperson as saying.

    The moves follow the grounding of hundreds of pilots whose licences Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan termed “dubious”. Most pilots were affiliated with PIA.

  • Show your COVID-19 test results or go back: CAA tells travellers coming to Pakistan

    Show your COVID-19 test results or go back: CAA tells travellers coming to Pakistan

    Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) issued a notification on Tuesday saying that in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus in Pakistan, all international flight operations to/from all international airports were suspended except Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad Airports.

    Three steps would be taken to ensure the enhancement of screening with effect from Saturday, March 21, 2020.

    All international passengers arriving in Pakistan shall be required to provide a copy of test results for COVID-19 conducted during the 24 hours prior to boarding the flight. Test results must include the name and passport number of the passenger and the original test result shall be required at the disembarkation airport in Pakistan. It shall be the responsibility of the airline operations to ensure that no passenger boards without the test result. This is in addition to the health declaration form at the point of disembarkation.

  • Pakistan suspends flight operations to China amid coronavirus outbreak

    Pakistan suspends flight operations to China amid coronavirus outbreak

    Pakistan on Friday halted flights to and from China with immediate effect as death toll from the deadly coronavirus continued to climb in China and World Health Organisation declared it a global health emergency.

    “We are suspending flights to China until February 2,” Senior Joint Secretary of aviation Abdul Sattar Khokhar told Reuters, adding the situation would be reviewed after that date.

    Previously on Thursday, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) suspended all flights to Beijing until February 2. It is pertinent to mention here that PIA had restarted two flights to Tokyo and Beijing in May 2019 after a gap of three months.

    Meanwhile, Special Assistant to PM Imran on Health Dr Zafar Mirza announced that the government has decided not to repatriate Pakistani citizens stranded in China in accordance with the recommendations of the World Health Organisation.  

    “We believe that right now, it is in the interest of our loved ones in China [to stay there]. It is in the larger interest of the region, world, country that we don’t evacuate them now,” he told reporters at a press conference. 

    “This is what the World Health Organisation is saying, this is China’s policy and this is our policy as well. We stand by China in full solidarity,” he stated, adding, “Right now the government of China has contained this epidemic in Wuhan city. If we act irresponsibly and start evacuating people from there, this epidemic will spread all over the world like wildfire.”

    Mirza assured that the Pakistan Embassy in China was in close contact with Pakistani citizens in Wuhan and China was monitoring their activity closely. He said that the government will take responsibility for its citizens and ensure that they are taken care of.

    As the death toll from the virus hit 213, the World Health Organisation declared coronavirus to be a global health emergency. The virus has infected close to 10,000 people and all flights to and from China have been suspended to contain the virus and prevent it from spreading.