Airblue www.airblue.com

Travelling from Manchester to Islamabad, my family and I boarded the plane without any issues, located out seats, and put our hand luggage, which had two 17” Laptop Computers in the overhead compartments.

As more passengers boarded, they decided to remove some of my family’s hand luggage, and move it around to fit theirs in. The cabin crew let them do this freely, until I noted that one of the bags containing my laptop was now balanced in such a away of top of another lady’s bag in such a way that it was likely to be damaged. I removed my laptop bag, and asked one the hostesses to find a space for my laptop bag that had been displaced. She said I should place it in one of the business class overhead lockers.

I went forward and placed it in one as instructed. Then another group of passengers boarded, economy class passengers such as myself, who were being asked to place their baggage in the business class overhead lockers. One the hostesses assisted them yet again, placed all their luggage nicely, and removed my laptop bag. She had no idea who it belonged to and started to walk around the place asking who it belonged too!

When my wife informed her that it belonged to us, she now insisted that we place it under the seat in front, i.e. where our feet would go. We refused, as it was a fragile item and would reduce our leg room and wouldn’t fit anyway. Eventually a hostess found a suitable place in an overhead locker and placed it there, rounding of with quite a rude “HAPPY NOW?” which we ignored.

The message here, if you have a laptop, don’t travel Air Blue, they will not only not look after it, they'll make sure that you are not able to either. Or maybe they simply dislike British citizens travelling on the airline? In that all and sundry were allowed to move my hand luggage around, and even remove it at will from where it was placed.

Our return journey was just as eventful, the ground staff split my family into two rows, which they said would be resolved in the plane itself. When I was about to get on the tarmac bus to take us from the terminal to the aircraft, we were asked if one of us would be prepared to sit in business class, we agreed to this.

At the aircraft however, no one knew anything about a business class seat, so we went to our assigned seats, and sat down together as a family, with one spare seat left in the row. Two of us were in effect in the wrong seats. A hostess turned up, and made us all leave our seats, insisting that we are ALL in the wrong seats, even though I had boarding cards which proved that most of us we not. She was downright rude and condescending implying that we had not flown before, rather bizarre considering I take at least 6 flights a year, most of them long haul, as opposed to the short haul ones that your airline mostly offers. In the end, to make sure a pair of female’s were able to sit together, my family of 5 were split into three locations over two rows! Incredible mastery there, with my 13 year old daughter sitting next to a complete stranger, when she could have been placed next her father, mother, or one of her brothers.

overall its an comforte as compaire to otherlocal airlines, but one thing which is lacking with airblue is no commercial advertisment of airblue, there should be a advertisment compaign lounched by the airline by this people should know about the services of the airline,publisize the airline trough internet or people to people its not enough for the promotion of the airline, now its offering intrenational flights,so the standereds should be the international, again u people have to focuse on ur marketing and publisity, thanks