A Qatar Airways flight – QR579 – bound to Doha from New Delhi made an emergency landing at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport on Monday after developing a technical fault.
According to details, the pilot had to make the emergency landing after detecting smoke in the plane’s cargo hold. “The aircraft landed safely, passengers disembarked normally & were served breakfast,” said the airline in a tweet.
“A relief flight is in KHI & will depart at approx. 2PM local time, we apologise for the inconvenience,” the airline added.
The flight had 12 crew members and 283 passengers on board.
A day earlier, an aircraft of a foreign airline narrowly escaped an accident due to the timely action of the air traffic controller (ATC) at the Allama Iqbal International Airport, Lahore.
The pilot of Gulf Air Flight 764, coming in from Bahrain to Lahore, tried to land the passenger plane on a runway under construction, but the ATC stopped the aircraft from landing on that runway.
By timely stopping the plane from landing on the under-construction runway the plane, only 200 feet above the ground, narrowly escaped an accident.
Sources said that the passenger plane changed its landing direction and landed on the second line, as directed by the ATC. The pilot also appreciated the performance of the ATC, that helped thwart the accident.
