Lifting Biman off the ground

The management of the Biman - the national flag-carrier - continues to present a disconcerting picture. It is still incurring a huge amount of losses, causing a continuous haemorrhage on the public exchequer. It was converted into a public limited company a few years back. But real corporate management practices are yet to be introduced there. It is running along the same line as that of other state-owned enterprises (SoEs) in the country. The Biman is reportedly considering now to fold its Dhaka-Rome-Frankfurt route because of staggering losses to the tune of Tk 400 million to date -- Tk 21 million a flight. This has been rated as the highest on a route.

Why did it at all decide to restore it not long ago on April 01 this year? Did its authorities make a market survey? It is time for the authorities including the highest political leadership to see what they could do about the Biman.  The entire gamut of the Biman's affairs needs to be examined thoroughly to diagnose what its ailments really are. Even the British Airways veteran, who had assured a turnaround, had to leave his job on excuse of personal ailment, leaving the Biman to the intensive care unit. But the real truth needs to be unearthed. Urgent steps have to be taken to improve the airline's financial and operational performance and address its image and customer service-related problems. The first foreign Chief Executive Officer (CEO) had been keen to address Biman's past problems.

Corruption, as the reports in the media have, time and again, indicated, has eaten into very vitals of the Biman. Even a parliamentary standing committee had found massive corruption involving the national carrier over the years. Corruption detected there was just the tip of the iceberg. The real picture of corruption in Biman is much graver, said the chief of the parliamentary sub-committee. The airline had earlier made a remarkable financial recovery in a short time after it was turned into a public limited company in July 2007. But the progress did not last long. Several wrong decisions and mismanagement in the recent past have brought the national carrier to its knees.

The management's lack of knowledge about operation of commercial airlines, its inefficiency in marketing and market planning and rampant corruption at all levels have, thus, exacerbated its problems. Since the high-ups in the Biman management don't have any proper marketing background, they face a fierce challenge from other airlines led by experienced and skilled personnel. A customer service improvement and staff retraining programme needs to be undertaken involving all concerned, starting from flight crew and ground staff at airports, through to the staff at the head office, other branches and ticket offices at home and abroad.

Admittedly, the Biman has no or little scope, given its present circumstances, to achieve a status similar to that of the major profitable Gulf carriers. But it has to ensure maintenance of time schedule for arrival and departure of its flights and improve service standards including those of in-flight ones so that the passengers get the facilities that are on a par with all major international airlines. Without improvements, steering the Biman towards a new era marked by a high quality of reliable services and facilities will be impossible to achieve. A turn-around depends on quality improvement which in turn will ensure a reasonable level of profitability.