The national airline of Bangladesh has revealed plans to operate a single roundtrip flight to Toronto in the coming days. This is an interesting one, because unlike other one-off flights, this isn’t a charter or repatriation service.
In this post:
Bangladesh Airlines’ Dhaka to Toronto flight
Biman Bangladesh is promoting on its website how it plans to operate a flight from Dhaka (DAC) to Toronto (YYZ) in the coming days. Specifically, the flight will operate as follows:
03/26 BG305 Dhaka to Toronto departing 11:00PM arriving 7:15AM (+1 day)
03/29 BG306 Toronto to Dhaka departing 10:00AM arriving 12:15PM (+1 day)
The flight will cover a distance of 7,742 miles, and is blocked at 18hr15min westbound and 16hr15min eastbound. Biman Bangladesh has a fleet of 21 aircraft, with long haul aircraft including the Boeing 777-300ER, Boeing 787-8, and Boeing 787-9.
The airline plans to use the Boeing 787-9 for the flight, featuring 298 seats. This includes 30 business class seats, 21 premium economy seats, and 247 economy class seats. The carrier’s 787-9s are only a couple of years old.
Interestingly business class is totally sold out on this flight (or was just never made available to the public), while premium economy and economy are wide open. You’d kind of expect these flights to have lots of availability, given that this flight just went on sale a few days ago.
What’s the purpose of Biman Bangladesh’s Toronto flight?
What exactly is the purpose of this (for now) one-off flight? That’s an excellent question. This is being referred to as an “experimental commercial flight.” Allegedly Biman Bangladesh wants to launch regularly scheduled flights between Dhaka and Toronto in the near future, which would be (by far) the carrier’s longest route.
Fair enough if that’s the plan, but why operate a one-off flight like this? After all, most airlines don’t operate an “experimental” flight prior to launching a route. We can only speculate:
- This can’t be about determining the demand or economics for this route, given that selling a one-off flight a week in advance hardly gives you a good sense of that; for that matter, blocking off the whole business class cabin doesn’t help with economics
- You don’t really have to “practice” fly a route before launching regularly scheduled service, though is this about ETOPS, crew rest testing, or something else? I suppose the airline hasn’t operated flights this long recently, so perhaps there’s something to be said for testing crew rest procedures, staffing, etc.?
- It’s reported that several government and airline officials will be onboard, including the State Minister for Civil Aviation and Tourism, a director for Biman Bangladesh, and more
It sure seems to me like this is likely somewhere between a joy ride and an experimental commercial flight…
It is interesting to see how Bangladeshi publication bdnews24.com covers this flight. The author claims to have been told by an airline sales representative that tickets are “not for ordinary people,” though that’s not true, as at least now the flight is totally on sale, except in business class. And then the story goes on to say this:
Biman spokesperson Tahera Khandaker did not respond to bdnews24.com requests for the list of passengers.
Hmmm…
Bottom line
Biman Bangladesh will be operating a single roundtrip between Dhaka and Toronto in the coming days, using a Boeing 787-9.
Personally I’m hoping Biman Bangladesh launches this route on a regularly scheduled basis, as this seems like a fun flight review. And if the airline does fly to Toronto regularly, you can bet that Air Canada Aeroplan will add Biman Bangladesh as a partner on which you can redeem miles.
What do you make of Biman Bangladesh’s flight to Toronto?
When commercial flight for passenger. We want to fly to Toronto this summer on binman not any other flight
Welcome to Toronto, Biman Bangladesh airline.
We are waiting for Bangladeshi national carrier. Its about time.
This is somewhere between a technical feasibility, commercial feasibility, and a government/business level demostration flight. The premium and economy seats are for aviation enthsiasts and interested commoners ... also helps with some extra revenue of course.
I hope the collected data and experience will help enable the actual flight and future travel between DAC and YYZ. Non-stop sounds quite long (and thus payload restricted) to me. Why not the BHX or MAN stops, like our...
This is somewhere between a technical feasibility, commercial feasibility, and a government/business level demostration flight. The premium and economy seats are for aviation enthsiasts and interested commoners ... also helps with some extra revenue of course.
I hope the collected data and experience will help enable the actual flight and future travel between DAC and YYZ. Non-stop sounds quite long (and thus payload restricted) to me. Why not the BHX or MAN stops, like our old JFK route had?
An 18 hour 15 minutes westbound block time sounds just a little bit high to me, so I'm wondering if they've built in a splash and dash tech stop somewhere? Either that, or they're also avoiding Russian airspace and are going the long way around it to the south....
Probably, this is some kind of VIP/CIP visit to Canada, purchasing the entire Business Class capacity for the delegation. Now they are looking to reduce the cost a little bit by selling a few W and Y seats to the general public. I would assume that the flight is payload restricted, so I doubt it is commercially feasible in the longer run.
This is one more act of mismanagement. Is Biman making money or still in the red? It can never make money with these political decisions.
Asad: so much positivity going on in your life, huh?
I suspect Andy is spot-on. Some VIPs wanted to visit Canada, so why not make Biman ferry them across in comfort. Sort of reminds me of the old United "Chairman's flight" between EWR and CAE.
It’s just waste if poor people s money. This is nonsense.
Qantas did their little fake "test flights" from LHR and JFK to SYD. All about the PR.
Ah - Reminding me of the old days flying Biman Bangladeaths Ex- CPAir DC-10s. I hope the airline has improved since then.
@Tahsin Now that they're flying those new 787s I doubt the delays will be the same sort of problem as when they were flying ancient DC-10s to JFK. Hoping to see Biman at JFK soon, which was under discussion before Covid but much less clear now. The Business Class looks quite good and they've been known to have some good deals from time to time - Dhaka looks like a fascinating place.
Hope so that they become more efficient have fewer problems with delays! And yes the business class seats look nice, and I have heard good things about the food. I have not flown Biman since I was a kid in the early 90s, but for the right price and times I am willing to try Biman for flying back to Dhaka from US (I have switched between Turkish, Emirates, Etihad, Kuwait, Gulf over the past...
Hope so that they become more efficient have fewer problems with delays! And yes the business class seats look nice, and I have heard good things about the food. I have not flown Biman since I was a kid in the early 90s, but for the right price and times I am willing to try Biman for flying back to Dhaka from US (I have switched between Turkish, Emirates, Etihad, Kuwait, Gulf over the past 2 decades).
Traffic situation is a nightmare in Dhaka, but they're putting in a metro/subway system in place, so hopefully that also helps with the congestion.
I wonder if they'll be using Russian airspace
Given that their neighbor Air India still uses Russian airspace on all flights to the North America, dont see why Biman wouldnt also use as its mostly just western countries that are avoiding the airspace. But interestingly just saw and it seems Biman's flights to the UK has been actively avoiding Russia in past few weeks based on flightaware tracking.
Operating a one off round trip by Biman and carrying the so called VIPs is nothing but stealing poor Bangladeshis money in broad daylight with no shame by some so called VIG (very importan Garbage). Canadians shod never allow these scamsters to land in Toronto.
Being from Bangladesh originally, it's good to see Biman schedule a long haul flight like this. Biman used to fly to JFK with a stop in Brussels a number of years ago.
They have had a terrible reputation as an airline due to scheduling delays, but hopefully they can turn things around in a positive way.
Biman Bangladesh scores a slot in to YYZ. Hey ME3, how do you like them apples!