Cash-strapped national carrier Biman Bangladesh Airlines recently raised fares on all domestic routes to cut massive losses as fuel and maintenance costs surge, an official said. "The airfares have been raised by between five and seven percent on all our domestic routes,' Biman's spokesman Khan Mosharraf Hossain told AFP.
"We had to raise the fares to cut losses that continued to shoot up because of the huge increase in aviation fuel prices in the global market," he said.
It was the second time in less than a year that Biman has hiked its domestic air fares by as much as seven percent.
Biman racked up a record loss of more than 120 million dollars in the financial year ended June 30, 2006, because of higher fuel and maintenance costs. In the previous year it lost 41 million dollars.
Biman currently operates 155 domestic flights a week and also travels to more than two dozen international destinations with five DC-10 aircraft that are at least 20 years old, four Airbus 310s bought in the early 1990s and three Fokker F-28 aircraft.
In May, Biman launched a move to find a strategic partner in an effort to return to profitability but so far no regional airlines have come forward.
Under any deal, a strategic partner would manage Biman and supply aircraft in exchange for access to the national flag carrier's guaranteed destinations.