The national flag carrier chief executive on Monday hoped to turn Biman Bangladesh Airlines, a loss making concern, into a profitable entity in two years.
“A two-year strategic plan we have prepared is to bring Biman back from losses in 2014-15,” Managing Director and CEO Kevin Steele, who joined three months ago, told a press briefing at its headquarters in Dhaka.
Last week, the prime minister approved the plan for implementation, said Steele who rolled out a plan to double its fleet size to 16 and expand its network and improve ground-handling and other services.
At present, Biman provides ground handling to all passengers and cargo flights at the country’s airports and often faces public wrath due to its poor services.
Under the two-year plan, the airlines will introduce automation in all selling mechanism for eradicating corruption and bring massive improvement in punctuality and customer service up to the European standard, said Steele.
After taking over his charge, he announced to infuse dynamism in Biman as soon as possible and he has so far appeared to be successful in reopening services to Delhi and Hong Kong and bringing better punctuality in the flight schedule.
Steele said the rate of flight departure on time is 56.2% in May this year, which was 44.5% in the same month in the preceding year. “It is our best result for over two years though this is still below the 80% target we need to get to as a really good airline,” he said.
He further said his goal is to achieve the 80% of punctuality rate of the airlines flights within next one year.
“We are not looking for small improvements to Biman service standards, we are looking for major improvements to genuinely bring Biman up to world class standard for which the government and people of Bangladesh can be truly boasted of,” he said.
Biman will take a new look for its high quality as a plan is underway to form partnership with a local or an international company to upgrade ground-handling, he firmly said.
