Pakistan’s national flag carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) will launch direct flights to Sydney from Lahore by April 2022.
The new flight operation was first revealed by Pakistan’s Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan in February 2022.
Khan said that PIA initially plans two weekly flights between Karachi, Lahore and Sydney, with Islamabad to be added later.
He also said that as there were no direct flights between Pakistan and Australia, it took around 35 hours to reach the country with stopovers in between.
Australia! The Wait is over! #PIA is starting direct flights between #Pakistan & #Australia. #Lahore ⇔ #Sydney
— PIA (@Official_PIA) March 12, 2022
Stay Tuned for more details. pic.twitter.com/yC30epp9MX
The flight plans were later confirmed by PIA’s general manager of corporate communications Abdullah Hafeez in an SBS Urdu interview.
PIA will use its fleet of Boeing 777-200LR for the Australian flights. Flight number PK-9808 will depart for Sydney from Lahore International airport on April 22, 2022, with the return flight scheduled to depart Sydney on April 24, 2022.
Based on information from Sydney International Airport’s (SYD) website, PIA will use Terminal 1 at SYD.
According to the Australian Home Affairs, there are more than 90,000 Pakistani-born people in Australia, which is more than three times the number (27,250) recorded in June 2009.