Our second hand airline
S. A. Mansoor Gulshan, Dhaka
How long will Biman carry on with a limping fleet of ageing and sick aircrafts? These days we regularly see newspaper reports of Biman aircrafts stuck up in New York, Brussels and other airports for mechanical or other technical faults including a tarmac traffic accident in Dhaka! Humorously, we may say that it is a case of patchwork with wire and chewing gum keeping things together as done by flight pioneers in early last century! Jokes aside, I take my hats off to the cockpit and ground maintenance crew for their ingenuity in keeping Biman flying at all! Even the near fatal crash of a DC 10 in Chittagong, possibly related to landing gear fault and an overconfident and questionable commander (as reported in the press), has not woken up the government from its deep slumber. Now the detention of a DC 10 at New York at the insistence of FAA for unreliable technical standards has also not upset our government. Who in this case is responsible for shattering Bangladesh's image overseas? Maybe, the opposition parties have managed the FAA to ground the DC 10, if the usual government logic can be a yardstick!Airline passengers have just one option left, and that it is not to fly Biman at any cost! Unfortunately expatriate Bangladeshis living abroad possibly have lesser options, but I am sure they are also getting wise to the fact, as reflected in the large number of such passengers using other airlines! May be the authorities can save money by either privatizing Biman or winding it up. Otherwise one can just see an international incident coming up which will take Biman's image to a final nose dive (aeronautically speaking).
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