Future of Biman

June 07, 2007 00:00:00

On the question of 'Does Biman have a future?' I have been an airline aficionado ever since my childhood. I used to admire the PIA pilots flying into Tejgaon with their beautiful smoke belching Lockheed Super Constellations, then came the Boeing 707s, 720s and the occasional Tridents. This was long before airlines in neighbouring countries procured similar aircrafts. The Biman somehow did not have that magic and that is most probably because they never had a proper fleet plan.

The Air Vice Marshal and the Air Commodore I am sure know that it is next to impossible to fight an F-117 Stealth Fighter with an F-86 Sabre. The Biman operates in a market where the revenue is more or less fixed by competition.

For instance, there are several airlines operating between Dhaka and London and the Biman can not charge more than the other airlines. Therefore, the only option for profit maximisation is to reduce the operating and overhead costs.

The ancient aircraft that the Biman uses are simply beyond all economic operation parameters the Biman must make a massive capital investment in state of the art aircraft to reduce the operating cost, bringing it in line with those airlines with whom the Biman has to compete and if this is not possible, they should quit and leave air line business to those who have the credibility to organise the necessary funds.

Unfortunately, Biman has always been run either by the non-civilians or by the politicians. The airforce personnel are trained to keep their aircraft battle ready at all times and to go out and destroy the enemy.

About the politicians, I have a feeling that most of those who were put in charge of Biman, saw the inside of an aircraft for the first time only after they were appointed as the Chairmen of the Biman or some such things. I do not want to dwell on this any further.

Airline business is a highly sophisticated extremely competitive market-oriented business and should be left to the airline professionals. If we do not have them in the country, let us recruit them from the overseas and give them the freedom to do whatever is necessary to make the Biman profitable.

The Biman has a huge captive passenger base who want to patronise the national airline but not at the cost of the harassment and discomfort they have to endure now. It has a bright future but only if it is run by professionals who know their business and have the proper aircrafts with which to attract their customers.

M.I. Ali

Banani, Dhaka.