NEWS reports said air travel is steadily growing over the last couple of years mainly due to higher economic growth in the backdrop of difficulties in road and highway communication and uncomfortable train journeys. And taking the growing business prospects in view, four private airlines are already operating in the domestic routes along with Biman Bangladesh Airlines. Meanwhile, another passenger carrier named US-Bangla airline is set to launch routine flights in major domestic routes from April this year raising the question at the same time whether the country has enough business for them and moreover if they have enough trained manpower to expand the market and sustain the challenges.
As we see, corporate travellers are exponentially using the fast track air travel to attend urgent business meetings in major cities. Some years back only the upper middle class people used to travel by air but a newly emerging middle class are now booking flights to reach various destinations even to enjoy public holidays and festivities during Eid and Puja occasions. It must be moreover noted that with the rise of a highly dynamic entrepreneurial class in the country with increasing involvement in exports and imports air travel has become intensive in the domestic and international routes. Most airlines now reportedly sell tickets in advance for destinations like Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet, Jessore and Cox’s Bazar on special occasions.
The report said that the country is poised to witness a significant growth in domestic air travels in the coming years as the construction of some fast-track mega infrastructure projects involving over US$15.5 billion is likely to start rolling. Some of them include a deep-sea port, a metro rail, Rampal power plant, Rooppur nuclear power plant, LNG terminal in the off-shore, besides the Padma Bridge project. Business forecasts speaks of increased mobility of foreign experts, local officials and contractors along with more local people taking more air travels for various reasons.
Trade figures also support the trend. The Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh reported a rise of 11.58 percent year-on-year air travel in 2012 when some 589,108 people travelled in domestic routes. At this point the joining of a new airline to the industry will only make the business more competitive.
Aviation experts meanwhile, blame a lack of skilled man manpower as the main challenge for the domestic airlines. They believe despite the fact that we have a free market economy, two major airlines- one in the public sector like Biman and another in the private sector could develop a healthy aviation sector in Bangladesh. This is because procurement of aircraft is highly expensive and their maintenance is yet another technical challenge, in addition to its high cost. So we suggest exploring the possibility of mergers of some of the private airlines to muster their resources together to make a highly competitive company to successfully operate in domestic and international routes. We share the experts’ view that it is better to have one strong flyer than several sick ones.
