Last week, Punjab’s Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif defended her use of the provincial government’s recently-purchased Gulfstream jet for a private trip to London, saying the aircraft belongs to the office of the chief minister and that all four provincial chief ministers have access to similar facilities.
Interviews with officials in the other three provinces, however, show that their aviation arrangements differ considerably for other chief ministers. Speaking at a ceremony in Multan on September 17, the chief minister Punjab said she had faced criticism over her use of the aircraft to attend her daughter’s graduation ceremony in London.
“There is a lot of criticism today about Maryam Nawaz’s aircraft,” she said. “It is not Maryam Nawaz’s plane; it is the chief minister’s plane.”
She added: “You should know that all four chief ministers have this facility, but why is the criticism only about Maryam Nawaz?”
Punjab Information Minister Azma Bokhari made a similar argument in an interview with Geo Pakistan two days later, saying every chief minister had an aircraft and had the right to use it.
“Every chief minister has an aircraft, and every chief minister uses it,” Bokhari said. “They have the right to use it and should use it. But focusing only on Punjab’s chief minister and questioning her, when all the other chief ministers also have aircraft, is unfair.”
The aviation assets described by officials in the four provinces, however, are not the same.
Punjab has a luxury jet, Gulfstream G500, that reportedly arrived in Pakistan in 2025. Balochistan operates a Learjet 45XR, which has been in service since 2012, as well as two helicopters. Sindh has a Learjet 45 manufactured in 2006 and two helicopters, while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has a single helicopter purchased in 2010 and no fixed-wing aircraft.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Sahibzada Hassan Ali, the press secretary to the KP chief minister, told The News by telephone that the provincial government owns a single-engine Eurocopter Écureuil helicopter, purchased in 2010.
“The provincial government owns one helicopter, with a capacity to carry a maximum of three passengers,” he said. Another helicopter previously operated by the province crashed during flood rescue operations, he added.
The helicopter has flown approximately 700 hours, Hassan said. The model is now known as the Airbus H-125, while the provincial helicopter is the AS-350 B3 variant.
Shahab Ali Shah, the KP chief secretary, separately confirmed that the chief minister does not have an aircraft but has access to the provincial helicopter.
Balochistan
Balochistan, meanwhile, operates an aircraft and two helicopters. Shahid Rind, the spokesperson for the provincial government, said it has a Learjet 45XR aircraft, which has been operational since 2012 and can accommodate seven passengers.
Rind said the provincial government had established Balochistan Aviation, a company registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, and had transferred its aviation assets to the company.
The province also has two helicopters, he said: an Mi-171 acquired in 2016 that is currently grounded and can carry up to 14 passengers, and a Cessna Caravan manufactured in 2007 with a capacity of eight passengers.
Sindh
Sindh also has a fixed-wing aircraft and two helicopters, according to the provincial government. Rasheed Channa, the spokesperson for Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, told The News that the government has a Learjet 45 manufactured in 2006, along with two helicopters.
The two helicopters were inducted in 1992, Channa said. One can carry approximately three to four passengers, while the other has a capacity of about six to seven passengers.
Punjab
The aircraft at the centre of the controversy over Maryam Nawaz Sharif’s London trip is a Gulfstream G500, previously registered in the United States as N144S. The Punjab chief minister recently admitted that the aircraft cost roughly Rs9 billion.
The Gulfstream had already attracted scrutiny before the London trip. When reports first emerged about the provincial government’s acquisition of the jet, Punjab officials did not initially acknowledge that it had been acquired for the chief minister’s use.
At one point, Information Minister Azma Bokhari said the aircraft was linked to plans for the proposed commercial airline, the Air Punjab. However, government ministers later admitted the aircraft was being used for the chief minister’s official travel.
The Punjab government already had another aircraft for its use, a Hawker 400XP. A government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, told The News that the previous aircraft also remains operational.
