On 17 July, a Sharjah-Hyderabad Indigo flight made an emergency landing at Pakistan’s Jinnah International Airport in Karachi. The pilot of Flight 6E-1406 noticed a technical fault in the aircraft and as a precaution the aircraft was diverted to Karachi, Pakistan. An additional flight has been sent to Karachi to take the passengers to Hyderabad. A few days ago, SpiceJet flight SG11 made an emergency landing at Karachi airport. The Delhi to Dubai international flight encountered a technical snag and landed at Pakistan’s Karachi airport on July 5. A flight took the passengers to Dubai later in the day. More than 150 passengers were on board the Boeing 737 MAX plane.
Two flight incidents in the past few days have raised questions on the safety of Indian airlines and the DGCA has already ordered a probe into the increasing number of emergency landings. The more question that arises is why Indian Airlines Option to land in Pakistan despite India having no such agreement with neighboring country?
India and Pakistan are hostile and there is no direct flight between the two countries. Any traveler who wants to travel to any country must first travel to any Middle Eastern country like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and change flight for any country. Regular citizens cannot even travel to any country on a tourist visa.
So what do Indian airlines like SpiceJet And Indigo selected Pakistan for emergency landing. In both cases, the flights involved were traveling between the Gulf and India and the only flight route between India and the Gulf countries either passed through Pakistan or passed over the Arabian Sea adjacent to Pakistan.
India and Pakistan signed an airspace agreement in 1991, allowing commercial airliners to use each other’s airspace to travel to other countries to save fuel and time. While airlines do not use airports on neighboring lands, they do use airspace for travel. Back in 2019, after the Balakot attacks, Pakistan blocked Indian airlines from using its airspace.
This resulted in a loss of Rs 500 crore in excess fuel for Air India, the only air carrier operating international flights in Pakistani airspace. Not only this, Indigo could not even start its Delhi-Istanbul flight. This means that Indian airlines headed to the Middle East and Europe cannot escape Pakistani airspace.
As it happens, if something unwanted happens mid-air, airlines have no other option but to contact Pakistani ATC and ask permission to land at one of their airports. Pakistani authorities cannot deny permission because under the signed agreement, airlines can land in any county in case of emergency.
In the case of the SpiceJet flight, it was traveling over Pakistan when the snag was encountered, in the case of the IndiGo flight, the aircraft was close to Pakistani airspace when the malfunction was detected and was required to contact ATC and land. But there was no other option but to land. in Pakistan.
Had the fault been detected later, the pilot could have opted to land at any of the nearest airports in India. Or, if the snag was detected earlier, the pilot made a detour and returned to Sharjah airport.
During the SpiceJet incident on July 5, the company said it was a frightening few hours to arrange another flight and get the passengers out of Karachi because of India-Pakistan ties. While the enmity between the two countries makes diplomatic channel difficult and is a nightmare for air carriers in case of emergency landing, there is no other option but to land at the nearest possible airport to avoid any unfortunate incident.