ISB Islamabad

How deep the ISB board really is

The table above says where a courier can fly from ISB. This reads the same 31 destinations back for the questions a dispatcher asks second: how much of the board rests on one airline, how much of it runs less than daily, whether the return leg is as thick as the outbound, what the clock here does to a Gulf working day and which of the destinations shut at night, all of it computed on 2026-09-07 from AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics.

• 16of the 31 destinations are flown by one airline
• 16destinations run less than once a day
• 4destinations have four or more departures a day
• 54.8%of the destinations name Pakistan International Airlines, the largest presence here

Who holds the departures at ISB

26 airlines appear on the ISB board and they do not hold it evenly. Pakistan International Airlines is on 17 of the 31 destinations, 54.8 per cent of them, and on 5 of those it is the only airline flying the sector. The destinations it appears on carry 52.6 of the 63 departures a day this airport files, though other airlines fly some of the same sectors, so read that as reach rather than as a share of the aircraft.

The next largest presence is Airblue on 8 destinations. 19 of the 26 airlines at ISB appear on a single destination each, which is the long tail every airport carries, and none of it is a rebooking option when the sector you need is the one that fell over.

An airport held this tightly is quick to book and slow to recover: with 17 of the 31 destinations on one airline, the second aircraft on an ISB sector is usually another Pakistan International Airlines aircraft, and when there is not one the desk is looking at another airport rather than another airline. That is why the alternate airports listed above matter more at ISB than the destination count does.

How much of the ISB board is daily

Of the 31 destinations, 15 are flown at least once a day and 16 are not, 2 of them running once a week or less. The median destination on the ISB board is flown 5 times a week.

An average of 0.14 flights a day is the schedule statistic, and it is worth translating it before anything is promised to anybody: ISB to Kashgar (KHG) is about one a week, so a missed departure there is not a delay of hours, it is the next slot.

The five busiest destinations carry 33.8 of the 63 departures a day, 53.5 per cent of the whole board. More than half of everything that leaves ISB is aimed at those five places, so the depth on the board above is thinner than the destination count suggests, and a hand carry that is not going to one of them is planned around a single departure time.

Destination	Country	The only airline on it	Flights a week	km	Routing
Dushanbe DYU	Tajikistan	Somon Air	1	661	plan this
Kashgar KHG	China	China Southern Airlines	1	725	plan this
Al Ain City AAN	the United Arab Emirates	Pakistan International Airlines	2	1,964	plan this
Ras Al Khaimah RKT	the United Arab Emirates	Air Arabia	2	1,853	plan this
Tashkent TAS	Uzbekistan	Uzbekistan Airways	2	912	plan this
London LGW	the United Kingdom	British Airways	3	6,041	plan this
Medina MED	Saudi Arabia	Pakistan International Airlines	3	3,355	plan this
Paris CDG	France	Pakistan International Airlines	3	5,895	plan this
Ürümqi URC	China	China Southern Airlines	3	1,710	plan this
Bangkok BKK	Thailand	Thai Airways International	4	3,580	plan this

The ten destinations out of ISB where one airline holds the sector and files fewer than seven departures a week, with the weekly figure taken as the average daily rate multiplied by seven rather than as a fixed timetable. 4 further destinations sit in the same position and are listed in the board above.

The way back from ISB

The desk holds the return direction for 29 of the 31 destinations, and a courier plans the way back on those figures rather than on the outbound. On two of them the return into ISB runs thinner than the outbound by more than a quarter. The widest gaps are Medina (MED) at 0.43 out a day against 0.29 back and Manama (BAH) at 1 out a day against 0.74 back.

It runs the other way as well: Sharjah (SHJ) files 5.1 a day back into ISB against 3.3 outbound, which is the shape that strands a courier at this end rather than at the far end.

The clock at ISB

ISB keeps Asia/Karachi time, an hour ahead of Dubai all year.

When it is 09:00 on a Dubai working morning it is 10:00 at ISB, so a nine to six day at each end overlaps for eight hours. That is wide enough to settle a customs question at ISB and still make a departure the same day.

The night at ISB

3 of the destinations from here carry a documented night restriction of their own, which is a departure time question at this end rather than an arrival problem at the other.

Into London (LHR) the door shuts at 23:30 local, so the last departure from ISB that lands inside it leaves around 19:43, on a modelled block of 7h 47m. Into London (LGW) the door shuts at 23:30 local, so the last departure from ISB that lands inside it leaves around 19:43, on a modelled block of 7h 47m. Into Paris (CDG) the door shuts at 00:00 local, so the last departure from ISB that lands inside it leaves around 19:24, on a modelled block of 7h 36m. Those three departure times out of ISB are worked backwards from the published window with the block time model this site uses everywhere, 720 to 880 km an hour by sector length with thirty minutes on the ground, so they are arithmetic rather than a timetable and the desk checks the published departure before it promises the landing.

Where ISB turns up on the rest of this site

The airport also sits behind the Pakistan country desk, which sets out the customs practice, the working week and the road legs behind this airport.

The site publishes 7 airport pair pages that start or end at ISB, each with the distance, the block time, the carriers on the sector and a door to door clock. The busiest are Islamabad to Karachi (KHI), Islamabad to Jeddah (JED) and Islamabad to Riyadh (RUH).

Two courier postings name ISB as the airport a courier here flies from: Peshawar and Rawalpindi.

To price a movement rather than read the board, the route calculator opens with ISB already set as the origin, and it works out the flying time, the distance and the delivery hour for any of the 31 destinations above.