It’s good news and a new beginning to the nation of Pakistan after what has been a ten year black out from one of the world’s greatest airline.
British Airways has announced that it will now resume flights to Pakistan in 2019 after a 10-year absence that followed a major hotel bombing. The airline stopped flights to Pakistan following one of the most high-profile attacks in the country’s history.
The 2008 Marriott Hotel bombing in the capital, Islamabad took place during a period of devastating Islamist militant violence that swept the country.
Security has since improved, with militant attacks sharply down in the mainly Muslim country of 208 million people. In Islamabad, a web of road checkpoints dotted across the city for more than a decade has mostly been dismantled.
Richard Crowder, the Deputy British High Commissioner to Pakistan said that BA’s return was in large part due to “an improvement in the security environment in this country”.
Pakistani officials have also hailed BA’s move, saying it will offer confidence to other foreign investors and make the country less isolated.
“Once it gets around the world that British Airways has put its stamp of approval on Pakistan, it will put us one or two notches up as a country to do business with,” said Commerce Minister Abdul Razak Dawood.
The move by British Airways now makes it the first Western airline to restart flights to the South Asian nation. Currently, only the national carrier Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flies directly from Pakistan to Britain, but its ageing fleet of planes is a frequent source of complaints by passengers.
BA, which is owned by Spanish-registered IAG, is due to begin the London Heathrow-Islamabad service on June 2, with three weekly flights by the airline’s newest long-haul aircraft, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Islamabad has been running international advertising campaigns to rejuvenate its tourism sector that was wiped out by Islamist violence that destabilized the country following the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 and the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.
Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari, a special assistant to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said that the coming back of British Airways after a decade goes to show how far they have come as a country.
“Pakistan is becoming less isolated and more connected to the world, and that’s the Pakistan we want to see.”