US-Bangla Airlines, the country’s lone airlines that operates flights to China, has decided to keep continuing its operation to Guangzhou despite the outbreak of coronavirus that left a total of 902 people dead across the globe, reports BSS.
“We will continue (flight to China) to support those Bangladeshis who are willing to return home amid the virus outbreak,” CEO of the airlines Capt Sikder Mezbahuddin Ahmed told newsmen at a press briefing on Sunday. He said they will continue the flight operation to China as long as it gets forty percent of passengers.
“After outbreak of the virus, we have seen our 90 percent of returning passengers from Guangzhou are Bangladeshi nationals,” Ahmed said. He said the airline has taken all safety procedures to keep their passengers and crew members safe form coronavirus infection. The number of deaths from China’s new coronavirus epidemic jumped to 902 on Monday.
Currently, the US-Bangladesh airlines is getting 100 percent passengers from Guangzhou to Dhaka route while it gets only 30 percent passengers on Dhaka-Guangzhou route, US-Bangla airlines source said. The airlines arranged the briefing, marking the inauguration of its Brand-new ATR 72-600 aircraft by operating a special flight on Dhaka-Sylhet-Dhaka route.
The carrier will add four more brand new ATR 72-600 aircraft to its fleet by October 2020 to raise the number of flights on new domestic routes like Sylhet-Chattogram-Cox’s Bazaar-Sylhet route and Jashore-Chattogram-Cox’s Bazar-Jashore route. Currently, on domestic routes, the airline operates daily flights to Chattogram, Cox’s Bazar, Jashore, Saidpur, Sylhet, Rajshahi and Barishal from Dhaka while the airlines operates flights to Kolkata, Chennai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Guangzhou, Muscat and Doha from the capital city of Bangladesh on international routes.
