KARACHI: Airblue, on Friday, became the first Pakistani private airline to go beyond Middle East and take a long haul flight to England.

Its Airbus A321 aircraft, carrying a full load of 26 business class and 146 economy class passengers departed from Islamabad at 1530 PST and was expected to land in Manchester at 2030 hrs UK time, the airline said. Airblue will operate four weekly return flights on

the Islamabad-Manchester-Islamabad route which will increase to five flights from June 28, and eventually to a daily flight from mid-July. Passengers will complete the journey in nine-and-a-half hours with no change of aircraft.

The airline started its operations on June 18, 2004 with a fleet of three Airbus 320 aircrafts and a schedule of 12 daily flights. After a year, it launched international operations by introducing flights to Dubai from various cities in Pakistan. It has a fleet of six A320 and A321 aircrafts with a network of seven domestic and two international destinations and is operating 120 domestic flights and 50 international flights from Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar.

Airblue has plans for expansion both in increasing the fleet size and to start operations to new international destinations where there are concentrations of the Pakistanis, it said.

- (by 'The News' Correspondent)