South Air’s first Peshawar-Lahore flight lands in Lahore with KP governor on board

PESHAWAR: South Air’s first Peshawar-Lahore flight landed in Lahore on Monday, opening a new air link between the two cities and cutting a journey that takes around six hours by road to just 34 minutes in the air.

The inaugural service left Peshawar’s Bacha Khan International Airport at 1:56pm and touched down at Lahore’s Allama Iqbal International Airport at 2:30pm. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Faisal Karim Kundi, who inaugurated the route at a ceremony at the Peshawar airport, was on board the first flight.

Addressing the ceremony, Kundi said the route was about more than a new timetable. The flight, he said, was a symbol of the two provinces coming together, and part of taking Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ‘from terrorism to tourism’. The new service, he added, would strengthen trade, business and people-to-people contacts between the provinces.

A welcome in Lahore
Punjab Senior Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb received the governor and the flight’s passengers on arrival at Allama Iqbal International Airport. Kundi thanked Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz for her government’s cooperation in getting the service started, saying the initiative would help replace past bitterness with friendship and mutual understanding.

More routes to follow
South Air had already started flights between Peshawar and Quetta, and Kundi announced that services to Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan would follow soon, as the airline expands its domestic network. The governor said launching the Peshawar-Lahore service on Iqbal Day carried special significance, as Lahore is the city of Allama Muhammad Iqbal, the Poet of the East. The route adds another option for passengers travelling between the two cities through airports run by the Pakistan Airports Authority.