Islamabad (Staff Report/Agencies): Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) on Saturday clarified that no Israeli aircraft entered Pakistani airspace or landed at any of its airport.
According to a spokesperson of the civil aviation authority, the reports in this regard are totally baseless.
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On October 25, An Israeli journalist sparked a storm of rumours on social media when he tweeted that an aircraft flew from Tel Aviv and landed in Islamabad.
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In his twitter message, Avi Scharf, editor of Israeli newspaper Haaretz, said that the alleged plane did not directly fly from Tel Aviv but it made a brief stopover at Amman and then landed in Islamabad.
Earlier on Saturday, Federal Minister for Information Fawad Chaudhry responded to a tweet by former interior minister Ahsan Iqbal who sought explanation quoting the report of BBC on the landing of an alleged ‘Israeli aircraft’ in Islamabad.
Fawad Chaudhry responded to Iqbal’s tweet saying that the government would neither hold any secret dialogue with India nor Israel.
“The reality is that Imran Khan is not Nawaz Sharif nor his cabinet has fake Aristotles like you. We will neither hold any secret dialogue with Modi nor Israel,” the minister replied in Urdu.
“If you were so worried about Pakistan as you pretend to be, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Don’t show fake worry, Pakistan is in safe hands,” Chaudhry lashed out at the former minister.
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Not satisfied with the federal minister’s explanation, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Ahsan Iqbal tweeted that the way information minister got so angry over asking for explanation shows that there is something wrong.
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Meanwhile, in a further series of tweets, the Israeli journalist clarified that he was not 100 per cent sure if the plane landed in Islamabad.
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Avi Scharf said that the plane, after taking off from Tel Aviv and making a stopover in Amman, switched over to a different air traffic control (ATC) frequency and overflew the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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He added that the aircraft’s track was lost over the Gulf of Oman and it later reappeared on descending towards Islamabad using the same ATC frequency.
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After descending to 20,000 feet from an altitude of 40,000 feet, disappeared from the flight tracking website again. It later reappeared 10 hours later heading south-west from Islamabad on the same track back to Amman and then to Tel Aviv.
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According to BBC Urdu, the alleged Israeli aircraft was a Canadian manufactured Bombardier Global Express with the serial number 9394.
It was registered on February 22. 2017, in the self-governing British territory of Isle of Man. It is registered to a company called Multibird Overseas Ltd.
This is pertinent to mention that Pakistan and Israel do not have diplomatic relations. Therefore, airplanes registered in either country are not allowed to enter each other’s airspace.
