More than a week before the Air India plane entered Pakistani airspace, three Pakistani commercial aircraft had intruded into Indian airspace. These included two flights of Fly Jinnah Airlines (Lahore-Dubai and Lahore-Jeddah) and one flight of Air Sial (Dammam-Lahore) on June 12. These three flights went into the Indian sky for a few minutes. One of these flights remained in Indian airspace for more than 15 minutes.
That day, a very strong wind was blowing in the Punjab province of Pakistan and the weather was very bad. In such a situation, these flights had to change their route, during which they entered Indian territory. According to Pakistani media, the Air Traffic Control (ATC) of Lahore and Amritsar were in touch with each other.
Air India flight reached Pakistan
According to the airline, on June 22, Air India flight AI479 briefly went into Pakistan’s airspace while performing a ‘go-around’ maneuver (the process of taking off again after attempting a landing) at Amritsar Airport. The plane flew into Pakistan’s airspace at around 4:38 UTC (9:38 pm Indian time) and flew out of there a minute later.
Air India Statement: “The crew operating flight AI479 from Delhi to Amritsar on 22 June had marginally infringed into the Pakistan airspace while manoeuvring a go-around at Amritsar airport. The incident has been reported to the regulatory authorities and is being investigated.
— ANI (@ANI) June 24, 2026
Air India is also investigating to find out the reason for this incident. AI479 entered the Pakistan border near Wagah Border at 9:38 pm and remained on the other side of the border for about a minute before leaving from there. The data also shows that the flight continued to circle over Amritsar during the landing attempt. Not being successful, the flight returned to Delhi airport. India and Pakistan had closed their airspace to each other’s airlines as tensions rose following the deadly terrorist attack in Kashmir’s Pahalgam last year.
Leave a Reply