Cash-starved Bangladesh airline scraps flights to USPublished: Sunday, 30 July, 2006, 11:23 AM Doha Time
DHAKA: Cash-strapped national carrier Biman suspended yesterday flights to New York in a bid to cut massive losses and said it plans to halt services to other international destinations soon.
“The last Biman flight to New York flew today. With this flight, we’ve suspended all our flights to New York to reduce our losses,” Biman’s spokesman Khan Mosharraf Hossain said.
“The company used to lose 10.4mn taka ($149,210) for every flight to New York. And the loss was getting bigger because of our ageing aircraft and soaring cost of aviation fuel,” he said.
State-run Biman would also soon suspend flights to Frankfurt, Paris and Yangon under its cost-cutting measures, he added, but did not say exactly when.
Biman racked up a record loss of more than $120mn in the financial year ended June 30, 2006 due to higher fuel and maintenance costs. In the previous year it lost $41mn.
Officials said the company was also set to incur huge losses in the current financial year because of increasing jet fuel prices and a jump in the cost of fleet
maintenance.
Biman currently travels to more than two dozen international destinations with five DC-10 aircraft that are at least 20 years old, four Airbus 310s bought in the early 1990s and three Fokker F-28 aircraft.
Earlier in May Biman launched a move to find a “strategic partner” in an effort to return to profitability but so far no regional airlines have come forward, an official said, speaking on condition of
anonymity.
Under any deal, a strategic partner would manage Biman and supply aircraft in exchange for access to the national flag carrier’s
guaranteed destinations.
Last October, Biman’s board approved a sale of a 61% stake in the company to private investors in an effort to raise money to buy new aircraft for its dilapidated fleet. – AFP
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