The Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PKCAA) continues to deny services to Shaheen Air International (Karachi International) for its international flights out of Lahore International despite an earlier court ruling, ProPakistani has reported.
"This move from the PKCAA is unwelcoming and is solely intended to disrupt SAI's scheduled flights, which will create difficulties for our passengers," spokesperson and Director of Marketing Zohaib Hassan said.
Zohaib added that the carrier is now making efforts towards repaying its debts to the PKCAA, which were the cause for the suspension of services, according to a schedule approved by the High Court of Sindh, the highest provincial court.
The PKCAA claims that the carrier is not sticking to the repayment schedule. As such, the authority argues that it is no longer bound by the court order.
The parties have been involved in a prolonged dispute over debt for the last few months.
The PKCAA decided earlier in July to suspend services at Lahore Int'l to the embattled carrier over its debts to the authority totalling PKR1.25 billion rupees (USD10.3 million). The suspension was due to cover all international services with the exception of Hajj charters to Saudi Arabia. Domestic operations were not affected, although the authority warned that if Shaheen Air does not repay its debt, it would broaden the scope of the suspension. The authority has also nixed Shaheen Air's traffic rights for the Islamabad International-Dubai International route.
However, the carrier later secured a contempt of court notice issued by the High Court of Sindh to the PKCAA and the Lahore airport management. Shaheen Air successfully argued that by suspending the provision of the services to the carrier, the PKCAA was in breach of its own regulations by treating Shaheen Air more harshly than other defaulters, of which PIA - Pakistan International Airlines was the largest. The carrier also won the court's approval of its self-generated repayment plan, wherein Shaheen Air would repay PKR1 million every 10 days. Consequently, the court barred the PKCAA from blocking Shaheen Air's operations.
At the end of June, Shaheen Air settled a PKR910 million rupee outstanding tax bill. Amid the crisis, the carrier has also reduced the size of its fleet by wet-leasing all four A319-100s out and returning three out of eight A320s to AerCap.
According to the ch-aviation schedules module, Shaheen Air's international network out of Lahore Int'l theoretically includes services to each of Abu Dhabi International, Dammam, Dubai, Muscat, Kuwait, Sharjah, and Guangzhou. However, most of these routes were suspended at some point during June or July 2018, with the services to Guangzhou and Muscat active the longest, until mid-July.
