With the coronavirus taking its toll on the global aviation industry, the country’s carriers are equally feeling the heat of the global pandemic. Due to the drastic absence of passengers both in domestic and international routes, all private airlines, including Biman Bangladesh Airlines, are incurring huge losses. The amount of loss will increase further if the general holidays are extended more in the coming days.
Civil Aviation and Tourism Ministry Secretary, Md Muhibul Haque told journalists, “Until now, Biman Bangladesh Airlines has suffered a loss of Tk 235 crore, and the damage is increasing day by day.” Aviation Operators Association of Bangladesh (AOAB) general secretary, and also the managing director of Novo Air Mofizur Rahman said, “Due to the lethal virus, the economic condition of the country’s airlines has worsened”.
“Even if the aircraft does not operate, the operating cost is continuing. Besides the aircraft installment, there are civil aviation charges, staff salaries, maintenance expenses, and various expenses. For all these, we are facing a great deal of disaster due to the virus spread”, he added. If this situation keeps continuing, survival of the country’s airlines will be very difficult. In this regard, Mofizur Rahman sought help from the government on reducing the different charges of the aviation sector.
According to a recent report, with no flight operation, airliners currently have no income. Moreover, they had to make refunds for canceled and suspended flights. In this situation, Biman Bangladesh Airlines, in a letter to the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism (MOCAT), portrayed its current deplorable financial situation.
To tide over the loss incurred in recent months and current liquidity crisis, Biman has sought a fund of Tk 628 crore as soon as possible, to pay the salary of the employees for the month of April and meet the fixed costs. Meanwhile, another private airliner of the country US-Bangla, to keep the import-export operations of Bangladesh moving, announced on Sunday that it will launch cargo flights from next week.
It is to be mentioned here that US-Bangla is the only Bangladeshi carrier currently operating passenger flights (one weekly) to China's Guangzhou every Saturday from Dhaka. On 5 March 2020, the International Air Transport Association estimated that the airline industry could lose between US$ 63 to 113 billion in revenue due to the reduced number of passengers.
IATA had previously estimated revenue losses of around US$30 billion two weeks before their 5 March estimate. By 17 March, IATA had stated that its 5 March estimate was "outdated", and that airlines would require $200 billion in bailouts to survive the crisis. IATA further revised their revenue loss estimate on March 24 and that is to be $252 billion globally, a 44 percent drop.
On April 11, the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) extended an existing suspension of all international flights, except for China, until April 30, due to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This is the third time Bangladesh extended flight suspension period as the government earlier extended it twice from March 31 to April 7 and then from April 7 to 14 while the ban on some international flights first began on March 16.
On March 21, the CAAB imposed a ban on commercial flight operation to and from 10 countries - Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Turkey, Malaysia, Oman, Singapore, and India while suspension of all domestic flight operations was started from March 25.
