Biman Bangladesh Airlines (BG, Dhaka) will operate this year's Hajj charters using its own aircraft instead of wet-leasing two A330-200s from Lithuania's Heston Airlines (HN, Vilnius) after an outcry over the costs of the deal, The Dhaka Tribune has reported.
The Bangladeshi carrier issued a Request for Proposals for two widebody aircraft earlier in April 2022 as it expects a significant uptake in the number of Hajj pilgrims after two years of COVID-related restrictions. It subsequently selected, on April 30, the Lithuanian ACMI/charter specialist to operate two 266-seat A330s on its behalf. However, the decision sparked protests from the carrier's staff, including some members of management.
Reportedly, the decision to wet-lease the two A330s was initially rejected by the state-owned airline's board but subsequently approved during a session attended by only some of management members. Sources said the airline had enough spare in-house capacity to operate the charters, and even if it had needed to lease in additional capacity, there were better bids than Heston's on the table. According to them, Biman would have lost BDT1.3-2 billion taka (USD15.3-23.6 million) on the ACMI deal compared with potential in-house operations.
The Bangladeshi carrier used to wet-lease capacity until 2017 (including from Indonesia AirAsia X) but operated Hajj charters in-house in 2018 and 2019. The airline plans to carry around 31,000 pilgrims to Madinah and Jeddah International on 75 return flights spread over 90 days, starting on May 31, 2022. The airline's in-house widebody fleet comprises four B777-300(ER)s, four B787-8s, and two B787-9s, the ch-aviation fleets module shows.
Biman did not respond to ch-aviation's request for comment, while Heston Airlines said it would refrain from commenting until the situation is clarified.
