Turkish Airlines has been slapped with a fine of Rs100,000 for violating coronavirus standard operating producers(SOPs), a notification from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said Friday.
The notification noted that this was not the first time that the airline has gone against the rules, adding that a warning was issued to the Turkish Airlines on October 13 and 21 last year as well.
"It has been noted with serious concern that Turkish Airline again transported passenger [...] from Category-B country i.e. Dakar (Senegal) to Istanbul for onward journey to Lahore via Turkish Airline flight TKO584 on January 13, 2021, without proof of negative RT-PCR test despite warning and penalty," the notification said.
The CAA warned that violation of COVID-19 SOPs would be dealt with more stringently.
It would include, but not be limited to, the revocation of operating authorisation granted to the Turkish Airlines for flight operations to/from Pakistan, the CAA warned.
In the first week of January, CAA issued a list of the countries that it has exempted from the coronavirus restrictions, an official notification stated.
According to the notification, the issued list has been divided into three categories — Category A, B, and C.
Passengers from countries in Category A will not be asked to get tested for the COVID-19, the notification said.
Australia, China, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Qatar, New Zealand, are among the 23 counties that have been included in Category A.
Meanwhile, any country that is not included in Category A automatically falls into Category B. The passengers from these countries will have to present a negative COVID-19, conducted within the last 96 hours.
Although there is no country in Category C, the CAA said that in case a nation is included, the passengers from there would have to get a negative test before boarding a flight as well as after reaching Pakistan.
Pakistan has recorded 490,476 cases, 10,409 deaths, and 444,360 recoveries from coronavirus.
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