Pay Cut Row in Biman: Carrier ‘losing money’ for ticket cancellations

Biman is getting an unusually high number of ticket cancellations and the national flag carriers claims it was due to pilots' threat of not operating additional flights.

Protesting Biman's decision to cut pays of only pilots to cope with the fallout of the pandemic, its pilots' association had issued a deadline of July 30 for Biman to withdraw its decision or else the pilots would stop doing extra work.

Speaking to The Daily Star, Abu Saleh Mostafa Kamal, Biman's managing director and CEO, yesterday said the national flag carrier lost around Tk 7 crore in the last 48 hours due to cancellations of tickets.

He said most of the cancellations were of trips on Middle Eastern routes.

The Biman boss urged all passengers not to pay heed to any misinformation about pilots' going on strike.

"In an official letter, they [pilots] showed their discontentment over the continuation of salary cuts but [they] didn't give even hint that they may go for any strike over the issue," he told this correspondent.

Since July last year, Biman had been cutting salaries of all its employees, including pilots, and reduced its maintenance and operational costs.

On Thursday, the airlines decided to restore normal salaries for all employees, except pilots who have served the carrier for more than five years.

Revising the salary-cut structure, Biman said that from July it would cut five, instead of the usual 20, percent pay of pilots serving it for five to 10 years. It also said senior pilots working for the airlines for over 10 years would get 25 percent pay cut instead of 40 percent.

Sources in Biman said if the pilots do not fly additional flights, Biman might have to cancel flights to popular destinations, including Abu Dhabi, Doha, Dammam, and Dubai.