KARACHI: Hours after Pakistan International Airline staffers slaughtered a black goat near an aircraft before it was to fly, another aircraft with over 150 passengers on board developed some serious fault while in the air and landed at Karachi airport in emergency early on Monday, it is learnt here reliably.

After a couple of hours of unplanned stopover in Karachi, the passengers were moved to another aircraft and sent to their destination in Malaysia.

The faulty aircraft was undergoing repairs in the engineering department. It is one of the Airbuses that the PIA is to ground and phase out of the fleet in a couple of weeks.

According to sources, the PIA’s Airbus A310 operating flight PK-898 (Lahore – Kuala Lumpur) with over 150 passengers took off from Lahore early on Monday and after some time when it was flying over India signals/light started to blink in the cockpit suggesting that the hydraulic system — which controls the main system — had developed some faults and oil was leaking.

The pilot called the air traffic control at Karachi airport and decided to divert the plane towards Karachi. After landing here the passengers were moved to another Airbus and within hours it left for its Malaysian destination in the morning.

Responding to Dawn queries PIA spokesperson Danyal Gilani said that owing to some technical issue the aircraft (Airbus A310, registration No AP-BGP) was brought to Karachi, which is PIA’s engineering base. After swapping the aircraft the flight departed at 2300 GMT while the grounded aircraft is undergoing repairs. He, however, did not disclose how many passengers were on board.

Published in Dawn, December 20th, 2016