At least eight domestic and international flights at Islamabad's Benazir Bhutto International Airport were cancelled on Sunday due to country-wide internet disruptions caused by a submarine cable fault.
Airport officials told South Punjab News that the reason behind the cancellation of flights was the slow internet caused by a fault in the India-Middle East-Western Europe submarine cable, due to which flight schedules and ticket booking could not be confirmed.
It is difficult to tell when the flight schedule will be back to normal, the officials said, adding that flights would resume fully when internet services are restored.
The cancelled flights include:
Domestic
- PA-201: Islamabad-Karachi
- PK-368: Karachi-Islamabad
International
- PA-210: Islamabad-Dubai
- PK-701: Islamabad-Manchester
- NL-705: Islamabad-Madina
- NL-706: Madina-Islamabad
- PA-211: Dubai-Islamabad
- PK-742: Jeddah-Islamabad
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority and Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) have not specified how long it will take to restore internet services in the country.
The PTCL spokesperson said earlier that Jeddah has started making efforts to repair the cable, but added that "restoring the network will take some time."
According to ProPakistani, two other submarine cables, SEA-ME-WE 4 and TW1, have been offline since last month due to similar flaws, which has resulted in a bottleneck after I-ME-WE's breakdown.
The loss of these three submarine cables leaves Pakistan relying on SEA-ME-WE 3, SEA-ME-WE 5 and the AAE-1 submarine cables, out of which SEA-ME-WE 3 operates in a limited capacity, while the other two were installed only recently, ProPakistani had said.
Internet costumers continue to face difficulties as the services continue remain affected for the second day on Sunday.
Flight operation has been disturbed due to slow down of internet as at least 8 flights were canceled/postponed at Islamabad airport alone.
The internet services were affected when outage was reported in international submarine cable systems providing internet bandwidth to Pakistan.
Another international cable system SEA-ME-WE 4 is already under repair by the international consortium.
Pakistan Telecommunications Limited (PTCL) stated the company has successfully arranged for additional bandwidth through our international cable systems & partners.
PTCL has undertaken measures to arrange additional/alternate bandwidth through other cable systems & international cable business partners.
International consortium is working to resolve international submarine outage issue. Inconvenience to customers is regretted.
