
Less than three weeks after having its four-year European ban dropped, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) is once again in the news after one its flights landed on the wrong runway at Lahore.
On January 17, 2025, flight PK150 was operating scheduled service from Dammam (DMM) to Multan (MUX), but diverted to Lahore (LHE) due to poor visibility.
Conditions at the Allama Iqbal International Airport were no better, with fog limiting visibility to 600 meters. However, runway 36 Right (36R) has a CATIIIB landing system, allowing pilots to perform an autoland. This was the METAR issues about 10 minutes before the aircraft touched down.
OPLA 180225Z 27003KT 0600 R36/065D R18/1300D FG SCT050 SCT100 08/06 Q1019 NOSIG RMK RMID/0900D QFE993 A30.10=
The pilots of the Airbus A320-200-operated flight were cleared to land on runway 36R, but it was later discovered that they landed on the parallel runway 36 Left (36L). It was also reported that runway 36L’s lights were off prior to their landing.
Thankfully the pilots were able to land safely, but both the captain and first officer were grounded pending a further investigation.
This isn’t the first that time pilots have landed on the wrong runway, and it most likely won’t be the last, but I’m curious how this happened?
The Airbus A320 is supposed to autotune the correct frequency and course when the landing runway is entered. Of course it’s always advised that pilots check that the correct localizer frequency is pulled.
While I’m not versed on the requirements to conduct an autoland, I’m surprised the pilots still landed even with no runway lights turned on. Assuming the wrong runway was entered, shouldn’t both pilots double check the entered data? However we’ll leave that up to the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority to figure out.
This incident could not come at a worse time as the carrier was re-cleared to commence flights to Europe on November 29, 2024. Just a week ago, PIA was also in the news because of a rather unfortunate advertisement promoting flights to France.
Featured image: Anna Zvereva/Flickr | CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic