Biman Bangladesh Airlines, the national flag carrier, has decided to raise ticket price for a number of its international routes from July 1, said Biman officials.
It is a continuous process to increase fares on busy routes in ‘peak season’ to meet the operational costs as well as financial deficits, explained a Biman official, adding that last year alone, the airlines lost Tk 2.93 crore.
A decision was also taken to increase the fare by at least 10 per cent on the Kualalampur, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Bangkok routes, they said.
Besides, Biman will increase passenger fares on its flights to Calcutta, Kathmandu, Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Doha, Kuwait, Mascot and Rome, they said.
At a board meeting on March 12, the Biman management had taken the decision to raise the fares from May.
But airlines later decided not to raise the air fare in the month of May on grounds of competition with other international airlines.
The Biman managing director and chief executive officer, Kevin Steele, told New Age that July 1 is the start of the peak season, so all airlines including Biman will increase their fares from July 1. ‘This is the same in every country in the world where there is an off-peak and peak season,’ he explained.
He indicated that Biman is likely to raise its farers by five per cent from July.
However, in general terms, Biman is pricing its fares less than foreign airlines before July and will also be priced below foreign airlines from July 1, he added.
Kevin said, ‘We could decrease Biman’s losses by increasing the fares, but only in the peak season when the flights will go full’.
Moreover, the off-peak season tends to start in January but differs on some other routes specially Middle-East where off-peak may be earlier than January, he added.
The Biman management board wants to turn the airlines a profit-making enterprise within the next two years. For this reason, they are trying to improve its customer services and conduct its flights on time, the airlines officials told New Age.
In order to save the money, Biman had temporarily suspended four routes to Manchester, Karachi, Hong-Kong and Delhi, though the Dhaka-HongKong and Dhaka-Delhi routes were resumed last May.
-With New Age input
