Major change has come to Bangladesh's aviation market with the launch of a new privately owned operator and the start of a major restructuring at troubled state-owned carrier Biman Bangladesh.
In July United Airways Bangladesh launched commercial operations using one aircraft, a Bombardier Dash 8-100 turboprop, becoming the second privately owned carrier after GMG Airlines. United Airways has backing from investors in Bangladesh and the UK and is seeking to acquire additional aircraft for an expansion of its domestic operations. It also hopes to eventually operate international services.
GMG is expanding and now operates both domestic and international services, using turboprop and jet aircraft.
The market changes have been badly affecting national carrier Biman Bangladesh, but it says it is finally being given the freedom to make major changes. At the end of July it became a public limited company and although it is still 100%-owned by the government, general manager planning Belayed Hossain says the transformation from a public sector corporation should mean that Biman is now free to make decisions independent of the government.
"Earlier Biman was a public sector corporation and was regulated by the government. Biman was not able to take its own decisions independently and it needs to do so particularly in a competitive, deregulated aviation industry," says Hossain.
"The government finally felt that if Biman is not able to take its own decisions Biman will not be able to survive in the competitive aviation market."
Hossain says Biman has finally been given the freedom to make difficult decisions such as to radically reduce the size of its workforce. Nearly 1,900 employees recently accepted voluntary retirement, reducing the permanent workforce to around 2,800.
Over the past 12 months Biman has slashed its network by suspending loss-making routes. Destinations cut abroad include Brussels, Frankfurt, Manchester, Mumbai, Newark, Paris and Tokyo. Biman has also dropped services on most domestic routes and left them to the private operators. It now only operates on Dhaka-Chittagong, Dhaka-Cox's Bazaar and Dhaka-Sylhet, making GMG the largest domestic carrier.
Source: Airline Business
