Media reports on Sunday said that without completing all required procedures, Biman Bangladesh Airlines has opened its “experimental commercial” flight on the Dhaka-Toronto-Dhaka route. Questions have risen from different quarters about the national flag carrier’s inaugural flight that would cost Biman Tk 4 crore in taxpayers’ money. The first promotional flight on the route departed from Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka on Saturday night with 110 passengers. Of them, around 50 were government officials and their family members.
Talking to the media, several senior pilots and some Biman officials questioned the logic behind such experimental commercial flights. They also said it was a rare practice for other commercial airlines. It was a free luxury trip to Canada for so many government officials.
Aviation experts feared that Biman’s hasty decision to operate direct flights between Dhaka and Toronto might not be commercially viable. The high ticket prices, load factor, competition with other international airways and not following proper flight operation procedures raised concerns among them. Wasting public money on those in the government who must be pleased is the government. Joking part is to find out if a route is to be viable is not arrange free luxury visit.
Biman officials, on the other hand, claim that a feasibility study on the route supports the notion that it will be profitable, while the industry insiders remain unconvinced. To them, Biman would face losses and fail to compete with other airlines if the study of what they claim was not authentic. Sources said Biman will begin its commercial flights in June. It will carry 220-230 passengers against 298 seats.
Previously, Biman had launched flights to Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Yangon and Delhi in 2014, but the routes were cancelled after three months as they were incurring losses. Its flights to New York have also remained suspended since July 2006 for similar reasons. But the authorities this time are hopeful of flight operational profits as the airline’s 787-9 Dreamliners are less than three years old and more than capable of handling such a long route exceeding 12,500 km to 15,000 km. Reportedly, Biman has set the two-way price of economy class base fare at Tk 120,647, premium economy class at Tk 183,530 and business class Tk 268,547 for the route.
We feared that passengers might choose other foreign carriers like Turkish Airways, Qatar and Emirates because of their less fare with a stopover of two to three hours in their hub airports.
