NEWS report said Bangladesh Biman’s Dhaka-Syedpur flight was cancelled on Monday due to non-availability of operational aircraft while the inaugural flights of Dhaka-Chittagong flights along with Dhaka-Sylhet flights were also delayed because of one of the two newly leased Dash-8 Turboprops 74 seater aircraft could not take off.
It returned to the boarding lot as technical faults emerged and pilots were compelled to bring it back from runway.
Meanwhile, as we see, the very failure of one of the two aircrafts in the very maiden flight has raised questions as to whether Biman management has leased the right aircraft or vested interest quarters have their hand in leasing faulty aircraft from Egypt’s Smart Aviation in a murky deal. We know that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the induction of the two aircrafts to Biman’s fleet at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on Friday in presence of the Aviation Minister and other senior officials.
On that occasion she had asked Biman to make the national career profiteering over long time losses and also to make sure that it runs the flight schedules in time. But the suspension of the very maiden flight of one of the two aircrafts and some of its subsequent flight schedules has come out as a big surprise with questions about their proper engineering fitness.
The doubts become more pertinent when the leasing company withheld delivery of the two aircrafts at least by four days in a row over mode of payment. Airport officials said engineers tried to repair the technical faults but they failed to make the faulty aircraft fly. A team of six engineers from Egypt accompanying the two aircraft worked with Biman’s engineers and found out technical fault. It forced Biman to suspend several flights and to reschedule them. Some flights were also cancelled. Meanwhile passengers were boarded on the aircraft and unloaded and many of them took refund and flew in other airlines aircraft.
We know that the Biman officials are anxious to see the national airline do well for the prestige and honour of the country. So we are not unappreciative of their sense of patriotism. But still we have to say that there is negligence in management of Biman and serious effort is yet to be undertaken to straighten the management.
It is undoubtedly a big set back to find fault with the maiden flights of the newly purchased planes. The question is why our technicians have failed to make sure that they are taking delivery of dependable aircraft. We would hope that there will be honest investigation to find out who are responsible for buying defective planes. There is no use to hear allegations of corruption in the deal because this has become the legitimate expectation that some amount of fund from any financial deal has to go to the pockets of some influential ones. But at least the aircrafts would have been in good condition.
