First Foreign Commercial Flight After Taliban Takeover Lands at Kabul Airport

Image used for representation purpose.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/Wikiwand)

The first international commercial flight after Taliban took control of Afghanistan touched down in Kabul on Monday, 13 September. Resuming the flight operations, a Pakistani International Airline (PIA) passenger plane reached Kabul on Monday, before making a return to Islamabad.

CNN reported that the flight – which carried around 70 people from Kabul to Islamabad – mostly had Afghans who were relatives of employees and employees themselves of World Bank.

International news agency AFP noted that as commercial flights resume, it will be a key test for the Taliban as they had promised to allow Afghans with proper documents to leave the country freely.

PIA Spokesman Jawad Zafar, speaking to AFP, said that the airline was keen to resume regular commercial services to Kabul but it was too soon to say how frequently will the flights operate between the two nations.

"This is a great moment... after a long time since the change of the establishment in Kabul."

Jawad Zafar, Head of operations at PIA

Earlier, an Afghan airline resumed domestic services on 3 September and also the first international commercial flight flew out of Kabul on 10 September and landed in Doha, Qatar. Around 200 foreigners had travelled to Qatar.

From the time the last flight of US left the Afghan soil on 31 August evacuating more than 1,20,000 people, the Taliban has tried to make the Kabul Airport fully operational again.

Kabul last week, with the help of Qatar Airways, had operated several chartered flights out of country carrying mostly foreigners and Afghans who missed out on the evacuation.

(With inputs from AFP and CNN)