Every Bangladeshi with experience of flying Biman has critical experience to talk about. My own bad experience with Biman was in the 1980s when I was flying in Biman on its Dhaka-London route. When the food was served, I found in my tray very visible dirt in one corner. I called a Biman staff on board who saw the dirt and instantly told me that the fault was of the ground staff! With Biman always on the red, I have also found from personal experience most flights fully booked when I have sought to take a Biman flight. On board, invariably always, there were a significant number of seats empty! Again, almost always in Biman's Business Class, a large number of the seats were always occupied by Biman's staff flying complimentary. Biman's staff has always looked upon our national airline as "their" airlines and has misused it for themselves thus never allowing it in its nearly 40 years long existence to be a viable airline.
The sad personal experiences with Biman have led many of us to stop flying Biman. We did so because we could not take chances with Biman's regular habit of going haywire with its flight schedules. Despite all these, we have always wished well for Biman because we wanted Biman to be our image builder in the outside world, like some major airlines in our region for their countries.
Our patience, I guess, will now finally end for what happened the other day in Heathrow that has disgraced Bangladesh before the world. Bangladesh Biman flight to London and back to Dhaka was held up for 10 hours at Heathrow not for any technical problems but because all its five toilets were jammed by the passengers who had misused it grossly. Biman's Director Engineering explained that the toilet problem was overcome in two hours and then because of Heathrow's ban of night flights, there was an additional delay of eight hours. Together with this news, there was another equally bad one that came from the United Nations. A day before the "toilet embarrassment ", UN advised its staff not to fly Biman because of safety concerns and flight delays.
Biman's Director Engineering explained to BBC that its flight could not take off from Heathrow because "passengers threw bottles, cups, tissue papers and female sanitary napkins into all five toilets of the Biman aircraft ...This solid material blocked the toilets and there was a jumble in the pneumatic toilet suction system. It was a passenger-created problem. There was no mechanical fault." The Director's explanation given to BBC and thus publicised widely abroad puts Biman in the clear but only so far as its well know habit of passing the buck. These toilets were not blocked suddenly but must have happened over a period of time, apparently when it flew from Dhaka to London. What was the staff doing when the passengers were merrily flooding the toilet with the items mentioned by the Director BBC? From our experience we have seen on flights of other airlines, airhostesses, on long flights, going in and out of toilets, keeping the toilets running. There were also a lot of other things that the Biman staff could have done to avoid the embarrassing situation. If they had frequently checked the toilets, they could have seen what was coming and advised the passengers accordingly.
Biman's Managing Director, when contacted over the twin issues of the "toilet embarrassment" and the UN directive said that he was not aware of the latter. He however admitted that Biman was having problem managing its flight schedule but hoped this would be overcome once the new aircrafts ordered by Biman became available. He did not, however, say when these aircrafts would be available but by earlier reports that have come in new papers, these aircrafts are not expected to join Biman's present old and battered aircrafts sometime soon.
Biman's horrendous flight schedule record is a well known fact. It is a baggage that Biman picked up in earlier times as a trade mark when it opened flight connections without caring to relate it to the fleet available to it. Hence what the UN has underscored was something that is a well known fact about Biman. In fact, unless one has compelling reasons to fly Biman, one with some knowledge of our national airlines avoids it anyway. The UN's ban will add to the bad publicity that Biman has earned over the years for its lack of dependability. The sad thing about Biman's current predicament is that pulling it out of the doldrums has always been talked about but very little real efforts has been made to straighten things that has slipped from bad to worse.
In recent times, in addition to the failures to deal with its old fleet of aircrafts that has been one of the main reasons for the problem of keeping behind schedules, Biman has been in public focus for failure of its authorities to pay salaries to its staff. Biman has also faced string of corruption allegations. In the past, Biman had also been captive to associations in the organisation. Government interference had also made Biman employ a very high number of staff compared to the fleet it had and the business it was doing. In fact, ever since it was established as the national carrier for just not doing good business but to enhance Bangladesh's image abroad, it has been doing just the reverse; it has failed miserably in business and has damaged our national image instead of being our agent to enhance this image.
Bangladesh is a nation of 150 million with seven million of them living overseas. It is situated in a passage way of world airlines traffic. Thus there are all the reasons one can imagine for Bangladesh to have a national airline and to succeed with it. Sadly, in the nearly 40 years we have given to Biman the space, the encouragement and the indulgence, Biman has failed us badly. The episode at Heathrow and the UN directive should be taken seriously for some serious soul searching whether we would want to continue to give Biman more space, encouragement and indulgence. It is time to decide upon Biman's future. We cannot feel comfortable as a nation if we do not have a national carrier given the fact that we are a very big nation in terms of population. At the same time, we cannot likewise imagine continuing to have a national airlines creating a dubious record of failing to fly because all its toilets have been jammed. We cannot also let an airlines do business without dealing with the reasons that led the UN to ban Biman. The twin issues here are important for the government to take into consideration in dealing with the future of Biman.
The Managing Director and Director Operations of Biman have not been able to assure at all what Biman intends to do in future except passing the blame. The problem with the toilets is just a manifestation of an illness that Biman has been left with all these years without treating the causes. It had the luxury all along to be a losing concern because the country could not be without a national airline and was never expected, by government indulgence, to become competitive which is ridiculous given the amount of money needed to run an airlines and the intense competition in this business internationally.
There is also more bad news for those like us who genuinely want Biman to establish itself as a national carrier. One reason why Biman has become a white elephant is because the airlines, under government indulgence, had more staff than it could pay for. During the Caretaker government, 1800 people were retired from Biman for making the organisation viable. Many of these employees are now returning to Biman under court directives. Also, the employees' associations inside Biman that had extended to 12 at its height and has been one reason for corruption and unprofessional activities inside Biman but were banned during the Caretaker government are also returning. Added to these is the little known fact that Biman's status has been questioned by the Federal Aviation Authority of the US and the International Civil Aviation Organisation who are unhappy with the way it is being run. These two organisations have the power to ground Biman unless it can satisfy them. Biman is currently negotiating its status with them.
Biman is in difficult waters. Unfortunately, our good wishes for its future notwithstanding, it does not look like Biman is flying in the right direction and its "toilet embarrassment" and UN ban may be hints of a much graver illness in our national carrier.
Published in The Independent, September 4, 2009
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