A Boeing 737 Biman Bangladesh flight experienced technical difficulties at Kolkata’s Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport after taking on passengers. With the air conditioning turned off, the passengers were stuck in the sweltering heat for nearly four hours.
The flight finally arrived in Dhaka around 1:45 am on Tuesday after fixing the technical issue. Film director Redoan Rony, a passenger on the flight, described his experience as ‘horrendous’, reports bdnews24.com.
“They kept having engine issues, but all the passengers were stuck on the plane,” he wrote on Facebook. “There was no electricity, so the air conditioning was off and everyone was boiling. But they weren’t allowing any passengers to disembark either. The regular passengers were taken ill, so you can just imagine what happened to the children and the elderly.”
Biman, which has seen controversy in the past few days, is once again under fire. Passengers say they were most enraged by the fact that they were detained inside the aircraft during the lengthy time it took to fix the problem.
Tahera Khondker, general manager of public relations at Biman, said the airline was forced to do so as passengers who have crossed immigration and boarded a plane are not allowed to disembark.
WHAT HAPPENED?
The Biman flight was to leave Kolkata at 8:30 pm. The pilot stopped the flight just as it was preparing to take off after noticing a warning light from the landing gear.
It took two rounds of repairs lasting nearly two hours to fix the problem. The 158 passengers inside the plane had to endure that length of time without access to air conditioning. Several people felt sick due to the oppressive heat.
“A flight scheduled for 8:30 pm finally left at 12:30 am!” wrote Redoan Rony in his Facebook post.
It took another hour after landing at Dhaka airport before the luggage was released to the passengers, he said.
“Who is looking after Biman Airlines? Who runs it this way?” Rony said.
Tahera Khondker said the flight was suspended when the warning showed on the flight’s dashboard. Then, engineers of India’s Jet Airways were informed.
“They did preliminary repairs on it. But the same warning came as the pilot was preparing to fly. The engineers were called in again and they, following safety rules, turned off the power connections on the airline. That is why the power was off.”
“The air conditioning was turned off for as long as the engineers were working. But it wasn’t four hours, it was closer to three and a quarter. The flight arrived in Dhaka with the passengers on board at 1:42 am.”
“The passengers were not allowed to disembark at the time. The airport authority has a restriction which says that passengers who have passed immigration and boarded cannot be allowed to get off the plane.”
The same plane will fly on the Dhaka-Chattogram-Dhaka route on Tuesday afternoon, the Biman spokeswoman added.
Biman has long faced allegations of neglecting repairs and upkeep and failing to maintain its fleet. The image of the national flag carrier has been damaged recently due to a series of collisions between planes in hangars and delays due to mechanical malfunctions.
On Jul 3, two Biman planes collided at a hangar of Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.
A similar accident occurred on Apr 10, putting two other planes out of commission for a few days.
Five officials, including a principal engineer, were temporarily suspended over the incident on May 11.
On Jun 16, a Biman plane was involved in an accident after dropping off its passengers. The maintenance personnel started the pushback, which takes the plane to its parking spot, without first disconnecting the aircraft from the boarding bridge. Though the incident did not result in damage, a committee was formed to look into it.
LANDING GEAR ISSUES
This is the third time in the past eight months a Biman flight has experienced issues with its landing gear.
On Jun 16, a domestic Biman Dash-8 flight carrying 74 passengers had to make a ‘technical landing’ at Shahjalal International Airport due to problems with its landing gear.
On Dec 1, a Biman Dash-8 flight had to make an emergency landing at Chattogram’s Shah Amanat Airport after landing gear trouble.
On Sept 19, 2019, a flight from Dhaka to Singapore had to land back in Dhaka an hour after takeoff due to landing gear issues.