Biman Bangladesh Airlines, the flag carrier of Bangladesh, has broken its Boeing fleet commonality with an order from Airbus.
The Bangladeshi airline is set to buy 10 Airbus aircraft. “As per our requirement, the decision has been taken to purchase 10 aircraft in phases. The technical committee is assessing now,” said Mahbub Ali, the State Minister of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism of Bangladesh, in an interview with Reuters. Previously, the publication’s sources said that the carrier was close to finalizing an agreement for 10 Airbus A350 aircraft.
“Every country has both Airbus and Boeing in their fleet. We didn’t have an Airbus in our fleet,” continued Ali.
In May 2023, when Salman Rahman, the Private Industry and Investment Adviser to Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, visited the United Kingdom (UK), Rahman and Dominic Johnson, the Minister of State at the UK Department of Business and Trade (DBT) signed an agreement titled the Aviation Trade and Investment Partnership between the two countries.
“Bangladesh can also get long-term credit facilities from UK Export Finance scheme on easy terms for the purchase of aircraft from Airbus,” a statement by the Bangladesh High Commission in the UK read at the time.
Aside from five De Havilland Canada DHC-8 Q400 aircraft, Biman Bangladesh currently runs an all-Boeing operation. In total, the Bangladeshi airline has 16 Boeing aircraft, namely six 737-800, four 777-300ER, four 787-8, and two 787-9s, according to ch-aviation.com data.
Its last deliveries from Boeing were in 2019, when the United States (US) manufacturer sent three 787s, two 787-8 and one 787-9, to Biman Bangladesh. During the same year, the airline took delivery of two 737-800 aircraft from the second-hand market, ch-aviation.com data showed.
Biman Bangladesh retired its only Airbus aircraft, six Airbus A310s, in September 2016.
Boeing’s Orders & Deliveries data, as of May 31, 2023, showed that Biman Bangladesh has no unfilled orders from the manufacturer.
Previous local media reports suggested that the airline was eyeing a total of 10 aircraft from Airbus, specifically eight passenger and two cargo aircraft.