Getting to Pakistan

Pick the airport before you pick the airline. Get it the wrong way round and you'll open a two-week trip with a domestic connection you never needed. For most people reading this the answer is Islamabad. It isn't the answer for everyone, and the rest of this page is about telling the difference.

The gateways

Three airports carry the bulk of the international traffic: Islamabad (ISB), Karachi (KHI) and Lahore (LHE). Behind them sits a second tier designated international and handling some cross-border flying, including Peshawar, Multan, Quetta, Sialkot, Faisalabad, Sukkur, Turbat, Gwadar and, since December 2021, Skardu.

Skardu is the surprise on that list, and it took its first international arrival in August 2023, a PIA service from Dubai. Don't build a trip on it. One route on a board isn't a network.

The national carrier, and the European question

PIA's European and UK flying has been switched off and back on inside five years, so any account of it that carries no date is worthless to you. Here's the sequence. The EU aviation safety agency lifted its ban in November 2024, and the first flight back, Islamabad to Paris, went in January 2025. The UK Civil Aviation Authority lifted its own restriction in July 2025, the airline got its Third Country Operator certificate that September, and Manchester restarted in October. Heathrow came last: Islamabad on 29 March 2026, Lahore the day after.

Frequencies move. Islamabad to Heathrow is three or four a week, so check the schedule against your own dates rather than a number written down months earlier, this page included. Westwards the network is thinner than the airline's history suggests: Toronto is the only North American destination, and there's been no nonstop to the United States since 2017.

The private Pakistani carriers fly a narrower map. Airblue, AirSial and Fly Jinnah all go international, and all three go to the Gulf: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, with Baku added by Airblue. SereneAir is the cautionary one. Its operating certificate was pulled in October 2025 for having no serviceable aircraft and came back that November. The flights haven't followed it back. Don't build a leg on the airline selling you a seat.

The Gulf carriers do the heavy lifting

Coming from Europe, North America or Australia, you'll most likely arrive on a Gulf carrier through a hub, and that isn't a compromise. It's the best-connected way in. Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways, Saudia, Gulf Air and Oman Air serve the main airports, with a thick layer of low-cost operators beneath them: flydubai, Air Arabia, Jazeera, flynas, flyadeal, SalamAir. Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi each give you a same-day connection into all three main gateways.

Direct from Europe is the gap. British Airways appears on Islamabad's carrier list for London Gatwick, and BA has also started and then dropped a Lahore service inside the last few years. That pattern is the point. Confirm a direct European service is selling for your dates before you build anything on it.

Turkish Airlines connects Istanbul to all three main airports, and Pegasus adds a low-cost Istanbul link at Karachi. For China, Air China flies Beijing and China Southern flies Guangzhou, plus Kashgar and Ürümqi from Islamabad, which puts you on the Chinese side of the Karakoram without a long drive. Central Asia is quietly well served from Islamabad: Baku on Azerbaijan Airlines, Tashkent on Uzbekistan Airways, Dushanbe on Somon Air. Karachi picks up Bangkok, Colombo, Dhaka and Kuala Lumpur.

Which airport, by what you're doing

Hunza, Skardu, Gilgit, Fairy Meadows: Islamabad. Every northern flight and every northern road starts there. Anywhere else adds a sector you didn't need.

Lahore and the Mughal cities: Lahore. Well connected to the Gulf and Istanbul, and you land where you want to be rather than a motorway away from it.

Karachi, Sindh, the coast: Karachi. The widest choice of foreign carriers, including the Southeast Asian ones nobody else gets.

The north plus one city: Islamabad in, Lahore out. The motorway between them is fast, so an open-jaw ticket saves you repeating a leg.

Undecided? Islamabad. Almost everything people come here for sits north of it, and the other gateways cost you a day each way to reach the same starting line.

The land borders

Pakistan has four land neighbours and not one of those crossings can honestly be called simply open or shut. Each runs on a political calendar rather than a published one. Take what follows as the shape of each crossing and who to ask about it. Get the answer for your own dates from the missions before you build a route on any of them.

Khunjerab, to China. The highest paved international crossing anywhere, linking Gilgit-Baltistan to Xinjiang. It used to run seasonally, April to November. In December 2024 the two governments agreed to keep it open year-round and the arrangement was inaugurated in April 2025. Read that carefully. Whether the pass is passable, and whether the crossing is processing foreign tourists on a given morning, are separate questions with separate answers, and snow at that altitude hasn't read the agreement. Ask the Chinese mission about the visa and a Gilgit operator about the ground. The Karakoram Highway covers the road.

Wagah, to India. The famous one and the one you're least likely to use. Crossings have been suspended since 2025, after the Pahalgam attack that April, and trade stopped years earlier. In mid-2026 business groups on the Indian side were still petitioning to reopen it. No date has been announced. Don't plan an overland India leg on the assumption this reverses.

Taftan, to Iran. This one functions, and it's the crossing overlanders use. Pakistan stopped issuing local Rahdari permits in March 2026 and moved to passports and visas only from 1 April, which changed things for border-district residents rather than for you. The border is the easy half. Balochistan is the hard half: UK advice is explicit that you need advance permission from the authorities before travelling in higher-risk provinces, and the road to Quetta is done under escort and in convoy. Budget days, not hours, and start with the Home Department in Quetta.

Torkham and Chaman, to Afghanistan. Treat both as closed to you. They were sealed in October 2025 after cross-border clashes. Torkham partly reopened on 31 March 2026, and "partly" is doing real work there: one direction only, for Afghan nationals returning home, no trade, no general passenger movement, no entry into Pakistan from the Afghan side. Chaman has stayed largely shut. This pair changes fastest and reverses most often.

Rail and sea

The historic cross-border trains don't run. Pakistan stopped the Samjhauta Express between Lahore and Delhi indefinitely in August 2019, after India revoked Jammu and Kashmir's special status, and the Thar Express towards Jodhpur went the same way. Neither has come back. There's no way into Pakistan by train.

Sea is newer and far less settled. Pakistan issued its first ever ferry licence in August 2025, to an international operator, for passenger routes out of Karachi and Gwadar to Iran and the Gulf, and a passenger ferry terminal was inaugurated at Karachi in January 2026 with sailings to Chabahar expected later that month. There's still no published schedule you can book a seat against. File it as an interesting development rather than a way of getting here.

Booking, and where the money goes

Book months out, not weeks, and notice who else is flying. The demand that sets fares into Pakistan isn't tourism. It's the diaspora, and it peaks across the northern summer school holidays, again at Eid, and again in the December wedding season. Late winter and the shoulder months either side of autumn are the cheap end.

There's an awkward interaction with the mountains: the northern season and the diaspora season are the same season. Want the passes clear and the high valleys open, and you're bidding against everyone flying home for the summer.

So plan the money in two halves. Getting here is expensive and the price is largely out of your hands. Being here is not, by the standards of almost anywhere you'd fly from. Beds, food, transport and guides are cheap enough that cutting days to save money is usually the wrong trade. Buy the longer trip. Trip cost breaks it down, and getting around Pakistan picks up at the arrivals hall.

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