Only 7 passengers board Biman flight after technical setback

Only seven passengers boarded a Saidpur-bound flight of Biman Bangladesh Airlines today, thanks to the cancellation of a Biman flight after an eight-hour delay yesterday.

A Biman flight to Saidpur had to return to Dhaka yesterday within 15 minutes of its taking off from Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka following a technical issue.

There were children, elderly and sick passengers who had been at the airport for more than eight hours to go to Saidpur. The flight itself is about 50 minutes long.

Today, the return flight-BG 493 of Bombardier Dash-8, a 74-seated aircraft, got 27 passengers, said Abu Ahmed, district manager of Biman Bangladesh Airlines.

The Saidpur-bound Biman flight today reached the airport around 9:30am and the return flight reached at Dhaka airport around 10:45am.  

Although the national airliner’s today’s Dhaka-Saidpur-Dhaka flight got very poor response from passengers, scenery of three private airliners were opposite as flights of Novo Air, Regent and US-Bangla Airlines on this route operated with almost full capacity, sources said.

Biman and three private airliners operate nine flights every day on Dhaka-Saidpur route.