Airblue denied permission to fly to Sharjah

[LRE]

Airblue denied permission to fly to Sharjah



Wednesday, August 06, 2008
By Saad Hasan

KARACHI: Sharjah authorities have withheld permission for private airline Airblue to operate scheduled flights from Pakistan to the state, just days before the launch of the service on August 14.

The decision has been taken to pressurise the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of Pakistan to allow more flights to Sharjah’s national carrier Air Arabia, industry officials told The News on Tuesday.

“We had over 1,000 passengers booked and ticketed,” a dejected Airblue official said. “Besides financial losses, this episode will badly affect our credibility.” Airblue had recently added two Airbus-319 aircraft, which were to be used on routes between northern Pakistan and Sharjah.

Flights have been withheld by General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) of Sharjah on grounds of ‘pending discussion’ with Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), an official close to the negotiation said. “Pending discussion basically implies to Air Arabia’s endeavor to seek more flights to the country,” he added.

Air Arabia presently operates seven flights a week between the two countries, whereas none of the three Pakistani carriers are operating to Sharjah.

The case has brought fore the disadvantageous position of Pakistani airlines, which are losing their own market to Gulf carriers, an aviation expert commented. “They are taking all our passengers to Europe and onwards to US,” he said, adding that in return Pakistani airlines mostly operate on point-to-point basis.

He said CAA should take a hard stand on the issue and stop flights of Air Arabia unless the Sharjah authorities allow Air Blue to start operations.

However, none of the officials of CAA, which has claimed reaching milestones by attracting foreign carriers, were available for comment. Official spokesman had no clue as to what had happened and Director Air Traffic Manzar Jamal did not respond despite repeated attempts to contact him on his personal cellular phone.

Air Blue had also been denied more flights to Dubai. It was supposed to operate 14 weekly flights to Sharjah from Islamabad, Lahore, Peshawar and Faisalabad.

Shalini Rajan, Air Arabia’s Regional Manager for Pakistan, said she was out of station and can not comment until next week.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=128346