Biman flight cancelled 8hrs after emergency landing

After keeping 67 passengers waiting for more than eight hours, Biman Bangladesh Airlines said the flight will not resume its journey for Saidpur today.

The 67 passengers were told to receive refund of their plane tickets, Shakil Meraj, general manager of Public Relation Department of Biman Bangladesh Airlines, told The Daily Star.

The domestic flight of Biman Bangladesh after a test flight was expected to resume journey around 6:00pm, six hours after it made an emergency landing at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka.

But the authorities cancelled the flight due to delay in getting runway clearance from the Air Traffic Control (ATC) at Dhaka airport and closure of Saidpur airport at 8:00pm, the official said.

The test flight of the Dash-8 aircraft was conducted successfully around 4:30pm, he added.

Tanjirul Islam, one of the passengers of the plane, told The Daily Star, “We, all the 67 passengers, waited the entire day here only for going to our destination but finally the flight is cancelled”.

Earlier in the day, the aircraft took off from Dhaka airport around 12:30pm but it was forced to make an emergency landing 20 minutes later as the pilot noticed technical glitch in the small bodied aircraft, an official of Air Traffic Control, told The Daily Star.

However, the Biman official said, "It was actually not an emergency landing. The pilot just landed back due to the technical glitch."

Although, all the passengers had to suffer for the whole day, they were given proper care and refreshments, he added. 

All the passengers and crew members were reportedly safe after the technical glitch found in the plane.

The incident came just a week after the US-Bangla Airlines plane crash in Kathmundu, Nepal, where 51 persons including 26 Bangladeshi nationals died during landing.