Biman: A cesspool of corruption

OP 1 – VISUAL: ANWAR SOHEL

Shady deals, plundering public money, nepotism, flouting rules, risking passenger safety, incompetence, non-compliance – Biman Bangladesh Airlines has its own culture of corruption and dangerously reckless wilfulness. It seems to have a complete disregard for the system under which it ideally should operate, or for the safety of the people that it is supposed to serve.

Unsurprisingly, Biman is constantly in the limelight for one or the other of its misadventures. Most recently, it was the carrier’s unprofessional handling of an in-flight medical emergency that led to a fatality in a Boeing 777-300ER flight from Jeddah. The captain on duty was sleeping in the crew rest area – although it was only a six-hour flight, and as per rules captains are only allowed to nap in flights longer that eight hours, when relief crew is on standby – leaving the aircraft to a trainee and his assessor, neither of whom had valid licence to fly the aircraft.

The victim fell ill an hour into the flight, but it was not before the last leg of the six-hour flight (around 30 minutes to landing in Dhaka) that a medical emergency was announced. Even after the flight had landed in Dhaka, it took about 40 minutes to get the victim out of the aircraft due to a lack of awareness and preparedness as no medical emergency had been declared. By the time the victim had been taken to the hospital, he had breathed his last.