KARACHI, April 13: A total of 792 flights of the Pakistan International Airlines were cancelled and more than half of the flights which did take off were delayed because of a variety of reasons, most common among them related to the engineering department, says a report on three-month performance of the national flag carrier.

Sources in the airlines said the state of affairs was exposed by the flight regularity and punctuality report prepared by the PIA flight operations department.

It says the single most common reason for the delays in two months December 2012 and February 2013 involved the engineering department, which exposed precarious condition of the aircraft the national airlines flew. In January 2013, however, inclement weather provided a face-saving pretext to the PIA by causing more delays thanthe engineering department, according to the report.

The report says that the national flag carrier had scheduled 10,754 flights for the three-month period out of which 792 were cancelled, which was around 7.4 per cent of the total.

Similarly, out of the 9,962 flights the PIA did operate 5,204 were delayed, which meant around 52 per cent of all flights landing at their respective destinations were behind the schedule.

The report separates the reasons for delays into two broad categories, those caused by PIA and those related to other factors. Over 37 per cent delays were caused by the PIA, majority of which involved the engineering department, while about 63 per cent of the delays were caused by other reasons beyond the control of PIA, including weather, air traffic control, security, civil aviation authority etc.The report says that out of the 1,676 flight delays in December, 741 were related to PIA and 643 (almost 86 per cent) of these involved engineering department.

In January, out of 1,799 delays 456 were caused by the PIA and 294 (65 per cent) of these were related to the engineering department. In the following month, out of a total of 1,729 delays, 736 were caused by the PIA and 593 (81 per cent) of these related to the engineering department.

The report gives a number of other reasons which also contributed to delays. They are related to passenger handling services, flight services, food services, commercial, operations, information technology and PIA security etc while the reasons for delays beyond PIA control include immigration, customs, security, air traffic control, weather, civil aviation authority, others, etc.