Flights diverted from Lahore airport due to flocks of birds

A Pakistan International Airlines plane had a bird strike, engineers repaired the plane and got it ready within 5 hours.

Pakistan’s busiest airport had to divert multiple flights because of flocks of birds that made it impossible for flights to land. The affected flights were diverted to Sialkot, Karachi and other reports as flight schedules are severely disrupted. Local media ran news stories about the presence of marriage halls that produce leftover food and waste, which acts as an attraction for these birds. Just 4 days ago a PIA Boeing 777-200ER (AP-BGJ) performing flight PK-710 from Manchester to Lahore suffered bird strike during landing at Lahore Airport.

The affected flights include PIA flight PK734 from Milan with 342 passengers was diverted to Sialkot airport. But after the situation was cleared it was brought back to Lahore. But the aircraft AP-BHV was supposed to go on its next flight that is PK751. This flight to Oslo is now delayed by 8 hours. PIA flight from Madina PK302 was diverted to Multan airport.

Emirates flight EK624 was diverted to Karachi airport. It has now returned to Lahore airport and will take its passengers back to Dubai. At the same time, Qatar Airways flight QR628 is also diverted to Karachi but it returned and landed at 09:13. Its scheduled arrival time was 07:50 so it was delayed by 1 hour 23 minutes. The airport started facing the issue at around 06:00 and the situation returned to normalcy at 09:30.

So far there have been 18 such incidents of bird strikes at Lahore airport. Most of the aircraft affected by bird strikes were PIA planes. According to law populations should be away from airports but Lahore airport is surrounded by population on all sides and that acts as a threat to planes landing and taking off from the airport.

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