Airbus gives hope of economic viability

Airlines in Bangladesh, including Biman Bangladesh Airlines Ltd, will find use of Airbus aircraft alongside those of Boeing economically viable as new generations of the former are easier to operate and maintain than their predecessors.

Top Airbus officials made this observation while briefing a group of Bangladeshi media representatives during a recent visited to the final assembly line of A350s at the company's headquarters in Toulouse, France, known as the aerospace capital of Europe.

Biman Bangladesh is planning to buy 10 aircraft from the top European aircraft manufacturer, which raised concerns among aviation experts who point out that the country predominantly uses Boeing widebodies.

A widebody is a jet airliner having a fuselage wide enough to allow passenger seating to be divided by two aisles running from front to back.

Questions have also arisen over whether use of aircraft of different manufacturers by relatively small airlines such as Biman would be economically viable.

This is due to the fact that transitioning to operate and maintain Airbus aircraft would require a new set of equipment and related manpower, starting from pilots and cabin crew to engineers and ground staff.

Responding to this, Antonio da Costa, vice president of marketing for Airbus, said A350s, the new generation of Airbus aircraft, were easier to operate and maintain.

"When Bangladesh will buy A350s, pilots would be trained to operate those. Later, if the country buys A320s or any other aircraft of Airbus, the same pilots would be able to fly those aircraft following a 10-day training," he claimed.

"On the Airbus aircraft, you train them once, and then we call it 'Difference Training' and then you can have the pilots flying both aircraft day in and day out…And same goes for the cabin crew as well," he said.

"…because our designs to making them (including the A330) are very common…that actually simplifies things in the airline," said Costa.

All Airbus aircraft cockpits, be it a A320, A330 or A350, have the same man machine interface, he said.

"So, the aircraft reacts the same, the information that you get is the same and the actions that you are expected to do whenever you get some kind of information or more or less the same," he said.

Costa added that this was impossible when it came to Boeing aircraft, the major rival of Airbus.

Training a pilot to fly B787s and then again to fly B777s comes with a significant cost penalty, he said.

Airbus will help Bangladesh build its human resource and develop its human capital as the country is suffering from an acute shortage of pilots and mechanics, said Morad Bourouffala, chief representative of Airbus in Bangladesh.

Today a lot of the Bangladeshi traffic is being operated by foreign carriers, he added.

"By adding the new generation widebodies of the A350 with 25 percent lower fuel burn and best passenger experiences, Bangladeshi airlines as a whole will get the right tool to fight right up there with all the other major foreign carriers that are taking advantage of the traffic," he said.

Bangladesh is very well located in Asia and could take advantage of the existing passenger flow to be an aviation hub, meaning a transfer (or stop-over) point to help get passengers to their final destinations, he said.