Team News Riveting
Islamabad, August 25
An aircraft carrying Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a 46-minute journey through Pakistani airspace on its way back from a visit to Poland and Ukraine.
Modi however bypassed the tradition of conveying a goodwill message while flying over Pakistan.
Reports quoting Civil Aviation Authority said that the Indian plane entered Pakistan from Chitral and flew over Islamabad and Lahore before entering Amritsar in India. The Pakistani airspace was open to commercial Indian air traffic.
“The Prime Minister’s aircraft does not need special consent to fly over a country and has blanket permission. In some cases, the PM’s aircraft is allocated a call sign, the same way an aircraft carrying heads of state from Pakistan, are allocated call signs such as ‘Pakistan 1’,” the officials said.
The Dawn reported that Pakistan fully closed its airspace after Feb 26, 2019, following the violation of its international boundary and airspace by Indian fighter jets. Later in March, it partially opened its airspace but kept it banned for Indian flights.
However, Pakistan refused a request from Prime Minister Modi the same year to use its airspace for a flight to Germany amid heightened tensions over the Kashmir dispute. Two years later, however, Pakistan did grant permission for the Indian premier’s non-stop flight to traverse its airspace enroute to the US, the report added.
