Pakistan's first private airline to launch flights between Manchester and Islamabad has apologised to passengers after it had to cancel one of its flights in the first month of operation.

Passengers returning to the UK on Airblue's flights had flights cancelled twice in a matter of days. But Airblue said overall its punctuality during the first month was very good.

Twenty-two year old Sikander Subhani, a student said his flight was delayed and then cancelled forcing him to take an alternative flight 7 days later.

"My initial return flight was on June 22 from Islamabad Airport and it was cancelled .

"A day later I was told we would leave at 2pm. Then that was delayed by an hour and then by four hours.

"After waiting around for a couple of hours we were notified that we would leave at 4am.

"We were told we could get a free taxi or a hotel room. But before we could make a decision on what to choose the flight was cancelled altogether."

Airblue became the first Pakistani private airline to go beyond Middle East and take a long haul flight to England on June 1.

The Islamabad-Manchester route was increased to five flights a week from June 28 and will eventually lead to daily flights later this summer.

"Of my 50,152 rupees flight fare I was given a refund of 19,718. But then I had to wait around for seven days looking for another flight."

Sikander eventaully returned via a PIA flight.

Airblue started operating in 2004 and launched international flights by introducing flights to Dubai from various cities in Pakistan.

It has grown remarkably since then and now operates 120 domestic flights and 50 international flights from Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar.

Chaudhry Salman Tahir, Commercial Manager for Airblue stold Asian Image, "We do apologize for the inconvenience Mr Subhani had to go through and we can assure you that such intances were temporary and we do not see them coming in the future again.

"Our flight punctuality during this one month of our operations is evidence of Airblue being a scheduled carrier on the Manchester - Islamabad - Manchester route.

"Airblue's schedule compliance is visible from the ontime flights we operate every week thoughout our destination map.

"Furthermore, our frequency increase from 4 to 5 weekly flights from 28th June 2007 onwards is an endorsement of our strong ability to operate on this route successfully.

"We can once again assure our customers that the problems faced were nothing but temporary and incidental.