Air ticket fraud, officials are involved

In May this year, 20 travel agencies have been named in the investigation report of ticket shortage and fraud to send workers from Dhaka to Kuala Lumpur.

Dishonest officials and employees of different levels of Biman involved in ticket fraud of Biman Bangladesh Airlines. The name of the former MD, director and even the then minister of Biman came in the lobby or manipulation.

Shafiul Azim, former managing director and CEO of Biman, former chairman Mustafa Kamal and former minister Farooq Khan were found to be involved in the manipulation.

According to the investigation report, half of the 2,200 seats on 5 flights of Biman last May were rigged. And more than half a hundred seats are empty.

When the deadline for new Bangladeshi workers to enter Malaysia was set in May this year, 50,000 workers faced a shortage of air tickets from Dhaka. Many people had to go door-to-door at recruiting and travel agencies to buy Dhaka-Kuala Lumpur tickets worth 30,000 taka for 1.5 to 2.5 lakh taka. Many workers could not go to Malaysia at the scheduled time without getting tickets.

Complaints of ticket fraud were raised from various quarters. The Civil Aviation Authority and the Ministry of Civil Aviation investigated it. According to their report, a large portion of tickets are blocked before they are opened in Biman’s online system.

Route analyst Farhana Akhtar blocked 102 seats in 12 minutes from 2 am to 12 am for the flight on March 24. 113 tickets for the May 29 flight were blocked or overbooked in just 22 minutes.

According to the report, 1146 seat tickets were falsified in 5 flights out of the three days of Biman’s flights from May 27 to May 30. Biman people fraudulently sold 323 tickets for two flights on 27th May, 58 tickets for one flight on 28th May, 373 tickets for one flight on 29th May and 392 tickets for one flight on 30th May to some travel agencies. 20 agencies buy these tickets cheaply; And sold to passengers at several times higher prices. Due to this fraud, many seats have become vacant in the crisis.

In the investigation, the involvement of Biman’s director of sales and marketing department Mohammad Salauddin along with his three subordinates Farhana Akhtar, FM Tabibur Rahman and Golam Mostafar was found in this fraud. In 2023, the authorities did not take any action against them despite being accused of ticket rigging.

According to the investigation report on manipulation, Biman’s flight tickets should be viewed and booked from authorized travel agencies, Biman’s website, mobile app and all sales counters. But the posts of expatriate workers through social media and various reports published in the media show that tickets are sold out.

Most agents report that they don’t have tickets. However, few travel agents offer to sell tickets at high prices. Thus, after buying the ticket and boarding the flight, the passengers find many seats empty.

Investigations revealed that a large proportion of tickets were being blocked before being opened in the ticketing system. Route analysts are overbooking and taking a significant number of tickets out of the system. Most of the tickets are sold through a few agencies. The problem would not have arisen if the unscrupulous airline officials had not done this by overbooking. Normally, after the sale of tickets in lower ‘RVD’ starts, after all the tickets in that class are sold, it is supposed to be sold in higher ‘RBD’.

But the Dhaka-Kuala Lumpur bound flights had a different picture. In this, tickets are issued by overbooking to lower RBD to interested passengers during the last phase of actual ticket sales. By doing this, Biman took the minimum fare from those passengers on paper, but in reality, due to the connivance of the travel agency and the dishonest officials of Biman, high prices were collected from those passengers. Biman has suffered financially due to non-issuance of tickets at the highest RBD from such passengers.

Business class fare including tax was Tk 1 lakh 51 thousand 915 at the end of May this year on Dhaka-Kuala Lumpur route. There were no passengers in business class on other days except for the May 30 flight. Economy class fares ranged from Tk 51 thousand 813 to Tk 78 thousand 11 at various RBDs. However, those who buy tickets on this route with the target of reaching Malaysia before May 31, have paid more than the fixed fare to the travel agency.

Taking advantage of the helplessness of the passengers, unscrupulous officials block or overbook the tickets making them scarce in the usual channels and in connivance with some travel agencies create an opportunity to sell them to the passengers at exorbitant prices. The report revealed that director Salahuddin did not take any initiative to investigate the complaint of selling tickets at high prices. A slapshot of a page came to the committee during the investigation. It mentions that 91 tickets were issued with reference to Biman MD Shafiul Azim and Minister Farooq Khan.

Biman Bangladesh Airlines Managing Director Dr. Safiqur Rahman’s statement was not available. However, Atab president Abdus Salam Aref told Our Times that there was a dire crisis with air tickets. At one point Biman gave extra flights. But even sitting in front of the computer we didn’t get the ticket at the time given by Biman. Some agencies have received tickets. The rest were deprived. There were irregularities here. Then it seemed like discrimination. Some agencies sell tickets at extra cost. We complained to the ministry for this.

Last March 21, the Malaysian government announced that the country’s labor market will be closed on May 31 for foreign workers. Bangladesh could not send all the workers who got visas on time despite knowing 70 days before. Due to the flight crisis, the air fare of Dhaka-Kuala Lumpur has increased from 25 thousand to more than 100,000 taka in the last two weeks.

As against the 526,673 demand letters from Malaysia, the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) issued clearance to 4,93,642 people till May 31. 4 lakh 76 thousand 672 of them went to Malaysia. 16 thousand 970 workers could not go. According to Bairar, a trade association of Janashakti, 5,953 of these workers could not go simply because they did not get flight tickets. The remaining 11,000 could not go for various reasons.

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