Bangladesh plans to buy aircraft from Airbus for Biman: state minister

Bangladesh has planned to buy aircraft from Airbus to increase the size of present fleet of Biman Bangladesh Airlines in a bid to tap the growing business in aviation, State Minister for Civil Aviation M Mahbub Ali said today.

"Definitely we have a plan to purchase aircraft from Airbus to increase the size of Biman's fleet and we are working on it," he said after the first-ever Bangladesh Aviation Summit at a hotel in Dhaka.

The civil aviation and tourism ministry, in collaboration with the UK and France, organised the event.

The junior minister said Airbus had given proposal to Biman to sell their aircraft and today's summit also reflected the matter.

Emerging from the inaugural session of the programme, Biman Managing Director and CEO Shafiul Azim told reporters that discussions are going on with Airbus and "if our requirement is fulfilled then why not?"

Mahbub Ali also said the country's aviation market almost doubled with passengers and cargo transportation growing at a rate of about 10 percent every year over the past 10 years.

He also said aviation in Bangladesh is expected to grow triple-fold in over the next 15 years. Currently, the number of air passengers in the country is eight million which is expected to reach 16 million in 2035.

"In this era of globalisation, it is not possible to achieve the desired goal of development alone in a high-tech industry like aviation."

This requires exchange of technology, knowledge, services and information among the states.

"Our two friendly countries United Kingdom and France, whose cooperation we have received earlier, are interested to support our aviation industry. I hope to see them in the future with us to develop our aviation," the junior minister also said.

Rushanara Ali, trade envoy of the prime minister of UK for Bangladesh also spoke at the programme while Marie Masdupuy, ambassador of France to Bangladesh, Robert Chatterton Dickson, high commissioner of UK to Bangladesh, Mokammel Hossain, secretary of ministry of civil aviation, Remi Maillard, president & MD of Airbus India and South Asia were present there.