In terms of money, the foreign airliners are making a hefty $1.2 billion air ticket revenue per year while Biman hardly gets around $200 million, and its share is gradually shrinking every year, aviation sources pointed out.

Interestingly, Bangladesh's airlines market is rapidly growing at a rate of 12 per cent a year, which should have encouraged the cash-strapped government to invest more in this sector to make Biman a cash cow.

In addition, the over-staffed national airliners is helplessly watching the foreign airlines bag another $500 million a year from carrying freights.

Biman is currently operating four DC-10s and four A-310 aircraft in international routes and five small aircraft on domestic and semi-international routes.

Moreover, two wide-bodied DC-10s are grounded for months due to non-availability of serviced engines. The engine suppliers of DC-10s -- KLM and MTU --have refrained from delivering the engines as Biman has not paid them $7.5 million of arrears.

With such small a number of aircraft, Biman is operating flights to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Sarjah, UK, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Japan, India, Nepal, Thailand, Singapore and other destinations. As a result, it is always failing to maintain schedule while its bad marketing strategy and poor services are driving away passengers to foreign flag carriers.

Bad manpower planning has also affected the 5000-strong overstaffed organisation in peculiar ways.

While the national flag carrier has nearly 300 pilots, it relies on around 20 foreign pilots to operate its DC-10s. The routes these aircraft operate on demand a pool of 40 to 50 pilots.

Though Biman has been using DC-10s from the mid-eighties, it has very few local pilots to operate them. The management does not promote competent pilots to fill the gaps and instead hire foreign pilots to run those. Each foreign pilot for DC-10 operation charges on an average $15,000 per month.

Some foreign pilots are also working as instructors in the domestic and semi-international F-28 flights and bag another $5,000 a month each. Interestingly, the job of instructors can be easily done by the local F-28 pilots, who are surplus in number. But they are not interested in this job as it reduces the prospect of flying on international routes, for which they get better payment.

According to Flight Engineers and Navigators Association (FENA), a platform of Biman's technical staffs, the airlines now requires mandatory accomplishment of Thrust Reverser Safety Enhancement Modification for its DC-10 aircraft by September 30. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), USA, made this safety system mandatory for all DC-10 aircraft in operation and notified Bangladesh about it in 2003. But as Biman has gone slow on this matter with the help of Boeing, it will not be able to modify the planes within the time limit.

This will entail grounding of all DC-10s and massive disruption of Biman flights unless Bangladesh can obtain a temporary waiver from the FAA. Biman can hardly survive the chaos and financial loss that would ensue, as the FAA has confirmed that time extension request will not be entertained without a logical plan with firm dates.

The FENA strongly advocates against leasing any more aircraft as this is wasteful. Aviation sources mentioned that DC-10s have globally become obsolete and there is no reason why Biman should stick to that.

"But sadly, as the local agent of spares and services of DC-10s is a close relative of the prime minister, Biman is unable to dump them and switch over to modern aircraft," said an official.

Besides, political decisions overriding professional marketing plan of Biman is also forcing the airlines to incur loss.

For instance, there is no justification for Biman's using wide-bodied aircraft on domestic routes to Sylhet and Chittagong but it is being done only because some ministers want to show their powers in their constituencies. Wide-bodied aircraft are costly to operate and to make profit they must fly long distance.

Political decisions in Biman's affairs never reflected national interest. For example, in August last year, the government allowed Qatar Airways to increase its weekly flights to seven from four between Dhaka and Doha. This decision was taken ignoring Biman's report that this increased facility to Qatar Airways will devour Biman's annual potential revenue of Tk 26 crore. The then civil aviation state minister Mir Mohammad Nasiruddin spearheaded this decision.

In exchange, Bangladesh got nothing from Qatar.