PIA flight ‘successfully' touches down at Dubai airport despite mid-flight emergency

In a dramatic incident last night, a Dubai-bound Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight from Karachi, successfully reached its destination despite experiencing a mid-flight emergency.

A Dubai-bound PIA flight, PK213, departed from Karachi at 2:05am last night and, around an hour later, found itself in distress while flying over the Muscat region.

The aircraft, which was flying at an altitude of 36,000 feet, suddenly descended to a critical altitude of 10,000ft over the Gulf of Oman in just six minutes, prompting the pilot to declare an emergency on the radar at 3:08am, according to a PIA spokesperson.

The Airbus A320 aircraft's pilot, who was not named, requested assistance from the air traffic control in Muscat and discovered that the aircraft’s hydraulic system had suffered a severe malfunction.

However, the pilot managed to overcome the harrowing situation by fixing the malfunction during the flight, demonstrating the exceptional use of his aviation expertise, the PIA spokesperson revealed.

Initially, the pilot had planned to make an emergency landing at Muscat. But once the hydraulic system malfunction was fixed, he managed to land successfully in Dubai after flying at a very low altitude of 10,000ft for about 50 minutes, according to aviation sources.

Furthermore, the PIA spokesperson revealed that the aircraft underwent an inspection at the Dubai airport, after which it was dispatched to the next flight.

The Airbus A320 then took a flight from Dubai to Islamabad and then to Skardu.

In response to a question, the PIA spokesperson said that the emergency occurred as a result of the ongoing shortage of aircraft amid the company’s administrative issues.

The incident comes around a day after Minister of State for Finance Ali Pervaiz Malik said that a Turkish airline showed interest in the purchase of PIA after the government announced its plans to privatise the airline.

Additionally, the airline faces a European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) ban from its most lucrative routes in Europe and Britain after a PIA plane crash in Karachi in 2020 killed nearly 100, which was followed by a scandal over pilot licences.