Revolving door for CEOs: Is it the way to run Biman?

In much of its 50-year history, Biman has seen chief executive officers (CEOs) come and go but the flag carrier has not seen a turnaround of its poor show.

In the last three years, Biman has had four CEOs. All of them were bureaucrats who joined the carrier with no experience of commercial operation of a company and little experience of the aviation industry.

Biman went through a quick change of its boss at a time when the country's aviation industry is experiencing headwinds following the nearly two-year Covid-induced shutdown. 

When the national carrier needed a seasoned professional to recover from the fallout from the pandemic losses, Biman became a revolving door as it got non-professionals during this period and all of its recent bosses lasted less than two years each. The immediate past CEO Zahid Hossain served Biman only for six months. 

The newly appointed CEO Shafiul Azim, who was additional secretary of the cabinet division, stepped in with zero knowledge of aviation business. 

This is how Biman has been saddled with inexperienced bosses one after another and they leave the company before they could gain an understanding of the aviation business or execute their own plans. 

This trend has made the idea of running Biman commercially unachievable because the CEOs are being appointed without being given any target, not even any tenure. As a result, CEOs cannot make long term plans as they don't know how long they will be in the position. 

When Biman is being run by non-professionals, other commercial organisations of the government, like the state owned banks, are run by professional bankers. 

Private airlines like US-Bangla and Novoair are also being managed and run by aviation professionals.   

We can look to our neighbour India for an example of who was chosen for running Air India, the country's flag carrier. 

Campbell Wilson, appointed as the new chief executive officer of Air India in May this year, has 26-years of aviation industry expertise across both full service and low-cost airlines.  He was the CEO of the Singapore Airlines budget carrier Scoot, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, before joining Air India.  

Wilson previously worked with SIA in Canada, Hong Kong and Japan before returning to Singapore in 2011 as the founding CEO of Scoot.  

He is the first CEO appointed by Tata Sons that formally took over Air India in January – after being under government management for 69 years. 

Tata was in search of a CEO after they regained control of the troubled airline and finally appointed a CEO with long experience. Now, the airline is moving to expand its fleet to recover a strong global position by gaining a bigger share of regional international traffic and the domestic market. As part of that the airline is planning to order 500 jetliners worth tens of billions of dollars, according to media reports. 

On the other hand, Biman, which now has the biggest and modern fleet ever, could not use its full capacity due to pilot shortage and poor business planning. 

Frequent change of CEOs also delayed its pilot recruitment and business expansion plan. 

For instance, Biman started a pilot recruitment process in February 2021 but the recruitment is yet to complete as two CEOs have been changed in this time and a new CEO is running the carrier now. 

Abu Saleh Mostafa, who also served as Cabinet Division's additional secretary, joined Biman in February 2021 with no knowledge of aviation business. He was removed after 16 months of his appointment over irregularities in pilot recruitment. 

Later, Zahid Hossain, an additional secretary who was serving as director of Biman for a year, was appointed as the CEO of the carrier replacing Mostafa.

He was considered better than the others because at least he had some experience of working in the aviation sector.

After taking over, Hossain rebooted the same pilot recruitment process as Biman was running with a severe pilot crisis and manpower shortage.  

He told The Business Standard that Biman could not use its fleet of Boeing 787 at full capacity due to pilot shortage. A Boeing 787 could be in operation for 14 to 15 hours per day, while Biman had been using the aircraft for 11 to 12 hours.

However, six months after his appointment, he was booted out when the question paper of the recruitment test for 10 posts was leaked. 

Hossain was replaced by Shafiul Azim, additional secretary of the cabinet division, who also had no experience in aviation business. 

With a razor-thin business margin of 5% in the airline industry globally, Biman has been running with never ending crises with non-professionals at the helm. Biman got three CEOs in two years but the pilot crisis continued. 

The cases of the short life CEOs at Biman are illustrative of the problem with the state airline, some of whom were removed over corruption allegations and some were removed for undisclosed reasons. 

For instance, AM Mosaddique Ahmed had a long career with Biman and was appointed CEO after his retirement from the national carrier as director in 2015. 

Despite having aviation business experience, he could not complete his tenure of three years due to involvement in a pilot recruitment scandal. 

After his removal, the government appointed Md Mokabbir Hossain in September 2019 who was serving the Civil Aviation and Tourism Ministry as an additional secretary at that time. 

His appointment raised hope among Biman officials as he had experience in the aviation industry. 

During his tenure, Biman saw turnaround in its service quality and operation as he headed a massive drive against a corrupt syndicate inside the carrier. He introduced a fully automated ticketing system to stop manipulation of the reservation system. Biman recovered from the poor reputation of delays as on-time flight performance crossed 90% during his tenure from the previous 50% when the international average was 80%. 

He brought widespread changes in Biman's operational system through automation but before he could fully implement the operational changes, he was suddenly transferred after 15 months of his appointment, replaced by Abu Saleh Mostafa. 

After joining Biman, the first business Mostafa took care of was to reinstate the corrupt officials who were removed by Mokabbir Hossain.

Little wonder then that Biman has had little chance of shining while running all the while grappling with a series of unending crises, wasting public money.