The OnBoard Courier for Pakistan

After it come Islamabad (ISB) with 31 destinations and about 63 departures a day, Lahore (LHE) with 29 destinations and about 52.6 departures a day, Multan (MUX) with 10 destinations and about 15.3 departures a day, Sialkot (SKT) with 10 destinations and about 8.7 departures a day and Peshawar (PEW) with 9 destinations and about 8.6 departures a day. Those are the alternates. When the primary gateway is shut by weather, a strike or a curfew, they are what a courier is rebooked through. Between them the 7 airports in Pakistan that publish departures schedule about 222 movements a day and reach 122 separate destinations, counting each city once per airport.

Reach matters more than frequency for a hand carry, because a courier flies whatever is leaving. From KHI alone, 595 airports are reachable with exactly one change, on top of the 28 served nonstop. A gateway that multiplies its own reach that far with one change is a hub in the useful sense: almost anywhere is two boarding passes away. It is computed from the scheduled network rather than from a booking engine.

31 per cent of everything scheduled to leave the country stays inside it, across 9 domestic destinations. That matters on a hand carry because it decides whether the last leg can be flown or has to be driven. A consignee outside the gateway city is then a connecting flight, not a four hour drive.

Outside its own borders the country is tied most closely to Saudi Arabia, about 54.3 flights a day, the United Arab Emirates, about 53.5 flights a day, Qatar, about 11.1 flights a day, Oman, about 6.6 flights a day and Türkiye, about 5.1 flights a day. Those are the markets a courier can reach from Pakistan without a long connection, and they are also where a third country leg most often starts: an item that has to go from Pakistan to somewhere with no direct service usually travels through one of them.

36 airlines fly out of Pakistan in this data. Counted by how many of the country's routes each one appears on, the widest networks belong to Pakistan International Airlines on 58 routes, Air Sial on 25 routes, Airblue on 23 routes, Air Arabia on 8 routes and flyadeal on 7 routes. The carrier matters to a hand carry more than it does to freight, because cabin baggage rules, what counts as an acceptable carry on item and whether an extra seat can be bought are set by the airline and not by the airport.

The longest single sector out of KHI in this data runs to Beijing, China (PEK), 4,863 km by great circle. Great circle is not a flown distance and will read short against a real routing, but it is the honest way to state a reach: it says what one aircraft does without stopping, which is exactly the question a courier desk is asking.

From the Emirates, Pakistan is reached nonstop. The network file records 8 such pairs: Dubai to Karachi (KHI), about 7.7 a day on Airblue, Emirates and flydubai, Dubai to Islamabad (ISB), about 6.1 a day on Air Sial, Airblue and Emirates, Dubai to Lahore (LHE), about 6 a day on Air Sial, Airblue and Emirates, Dubai to Multan (MUX), about 2.4 a day on Airblue and flydubai and Dubai to Sialkot (SKT), about 2 a day on Emirates and flydubai. More than one nonstop pair means more than one chance to travel on the day the consignment is ready, which is worth more on this kind of work than any single fast flight.

The carriers on those sectors are Airblue, Emirates, flydubai, Air Sial, Pakistan International Airlines and Etihad Airways. With this many, the choice is an operational one rather than a preference: cabin baggage allowances, what each airline accepts as a carry on item and how it treats an extra seat purchase all differ, and those three things decide whether the consignment travels in the cabin at all.

Counting what is already published, this site holds 14 city pages, 4 standalone city pages, 7 Atlas entries, 1 airport page, 4 lane pages and 6 trade and history pages for Pakistan, and every one of them is linked from this page. That is the point of a country index: the material exists, it was written one page at a time, and until now there was no single place that connected it.

Alongside the reference material there is the country desk page and the courier recruitment page for people who already fly this market. The country page sells, the city pages answer, and the lane pages price. They are kept apart because a reader arrives at exactly one of those three questions and merging them would bury the other two.