ISLAMABAD – In London, the passengers and crew of two PIA flights were not allowed to disembark for around an hour by UK customs and immigration officials searched for unknown thing.
The officials checked the documents and belongings of hundreds of passengers one-by-one on the flights from Karachi and Islamabad, causing one of the return flights to miss its scheduled departure time.
Snap-checking was a routine exercise carried out by UK customs authorities on many international airlines, said a PIA spokesperson. “They do this every month or two on a host of flights of various airlines. The last time it was carried out, the flight was delayed by more than an hour,” said Rana Muhammad Hanif, a PIA spokesman.