Editorial
It was waiting to happen
Dismal planning failure
Angered by unanticipated flight delays, passengers stranded for days together went violent at Shah Amanat international airport at Chittagong and Shahjalal international airport in Dhaka on Sunday and Monday.
While we do not approve of any kind of violent manner of protests leading to damage of public property, we cannot either defend the way some Biman staff members had allegedly roughed up a protesting passenger leading to the melee.
Having messed up the flight schedules, it was only expected of the Biman staff to be apologetic, tolerant and persuasive towards those thousands of Hajj pilgrims and other passengers forced into such uncertainties.
Why didn't Biman administration inform the passengers of flight disruptions beforehand to spare them the sufferings in absence of any provision for food and accommodation?
What kind of customer service is it from an international airliner with surprising admission to the media that their flights will have to wait until 24th September?
Such lapses on Biman's part are inexcusable, since given the severe aircraft shortage, it should have chartered sufficient number of planes ahead of starting Hajj flight operations.
Hajj is an annual event and there cannot be any excuse for not planning ahead for the occasion.
Biman should stop this ad-hocism in carrying out its flight operations with few aging aircraft and running into one disaster after another. Either the carrier replaces the aging aircraft with new ones as well as add more planes to its present fleet before going into full operation, or stop this mockery in the name maintaining a national flag carrier.
For now, it must take urgent measures to ferry the long waiting Hajj pilgrims, wage earners in the Middle East and others to their respective destinations.
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