Home Latest News In Tit-for-Tat Move, Pakistan Restricts Operations of Kuwait Airlines

In Tit-for-Tat Move, Pakistan Restricts Operations of Kuwait Airlines

by Staff Report

File photo. Farooq Naeem—AFP

CAA’s instructions follow Kuwait’s repeated refusal to allow PIA to resume flights to-and-from Gulf state

Pakistan on Monday decided to impose restrictions on Kuwait-origin airlines’ operations from Oct. 1 in what is being seen as a tit-for-tat move to Kuwait’s refusal to allow the Pakistan International Airlines to resume operations to-and-from the Gulf state.

In May, Kuwait banned commercial flights from Pakistan, as well as several other countries, in a bid to curb the spread of new variants of the novel coronavirus. Despite Pakistan’s visible decline in confirmed infections, the Gulf state has yet to allow national flag carrier PIA to resume operations to and from it. Meanwhile, Kuwait Airways and Jazeera Airways have been operating in Pakistan without any reciprocation from the Gulf state for the past month.

“While our national carrier has been vehemently pursuing operating flights to and from Kuwait, approval for the same has not been granted by Kuwaiti CAA,” Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) wrote to Civil Aviation Kuwait on Monday. It urged Kuwaiti authorities to approve the resumption of PIA flight operations to-and-from Kuwait, stressing that Islamabad had extended the maximum facilitation to Kuwaiti airlines despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the absence of any such approval, warned the CAA letter, the spirit of commercial reciprocity regarding commercial flight operations between the two states needed to be reassessed. It said that until PIA flights had been allowed to resume operations to-and-from Kuwait, CAA would—from Oct. 1—restrict the operations of Kuwait airlines to one flight each.

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