KARACHI: The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has allowed five airlines of the United Arab Emirates to carry out unlimited operations at another four airports in Pakistan.

The CAA said in a statement on Friday that the new airports opened for the UAE airlines were Quetta, Panjgur, Turbat and Gwadar. These airlines are already operating daily flights to and from Multan, Faisalabad and Sialkot.

It said that Pakistani airlines would also enjoy unlimited traffic rights to all UAE airports.

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The CAA said traffic rights to the UAE airlines for Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar had been frozen at the current level for the time-being because of infrastructure constraints at the airports concerned.

Open skies arrangements between Dubai and Karachi concluded in 1998 remained intact, it added.

All outstanding issues like replacement of obsolete text of the 1973 bilateral air services agreement and other anomalies in various memorandums of understanding have been removed.

The air traffic rights are now city pair specific and no more airline specific as had been the case earlier.

The travellers would benefit because competition would ensure quality services at lower prices, the CAA said.

Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2015

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