RIYADH – A Saudi Arabia-bound flight that took off from Islamabad faced an unexpected setback on Thursday, requiring an emergency landing in Oman due to technical issues.
The flight SV-3743, departed Islamabad with over 300 passengers mainly Hajj pilgrims, around 10:30 am local time, for Jeddah.
Scheduled to arrive at 3:30 pm in Saudi Arabia, the flight encountered technical complications, prompting the pilot to divert to an airport in Oman; fortunately, no injuries were reported among the passengers.
Passengers were anticipated to resume their journey to Jeddah on Friday, aboard a new flight scheduled for approximately 2:30 pm Pakistan time.
The airline’s country manager and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) have not revealed any details about the situation.
The government of Pakistan is in the final stages of completing the flight operations for this year’s pilgrimage; the total number of seats allocated to Pakistan this year was around 179,000.
Saudi Arabia is welcoming pilgrims from around the world at the moment and rough estimates say that Riyadh would be welcoming around 2 million pilgrims from the Muslim world.
