Disconcerting experience
Riaz Quadir On-email
As a Bangladeshi living abroad for many years, I was travelling to Dhaka from Paris on August 8th by Bangladesh Biman. The experience was extremely disconcerting to say the least. More for the shame it made me feel about it being representative of Bangladesh than any personal discomfort I had to undergo. While one can understand the dearth of national finance to run an airline (I saw no such dearth among the private sector in Dhaka where frivolous multi-million dollar projects of shopping plazas abound) it is hard to understand mismanagement that is wholly within the human control. If Bangladesh Biman aspires to be an international airline it must meet the bare minimum standards that would enable it to be included in that group. I wouldn't like to list the blemishes here, that ran from being listed as 'on time' on the departure board for an hour after the original flight time to reading lights not working in a whole section of the plane to '50 blankets for 100 passengers' (I quote the steward here) to a toilette that resembled one I once saw in a ghetto in Philadelphia... for fear of exceeding the space permitted in the letters section of your publication. I do not know how profitable the international sector is for BB and cannot imagine the raison d'etre for its existence other than national pride. But should the very thing that one has propped up for national pride become a joke that makes Bangladesh a laughing stock of the kind strictly reserved for banana republics, we should seriously reconsider the merits and demerits for its continued existence. Even as someone who has always tried to give his business to a Bangladeshi concern, I seriously doubt I will fly BB ever again if I have an alternative. My suggestion is that BB immediately disbands to save this much maligned nation further embarrassment. The routes it currently plies can be auctioned to other airlines or private sector. I rest my pen dreading my trip back to Paris next week.
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