While we compliment Biman for starting the Hajj flight schedule on time,we are dismayed that its Hajj operations are likely to cause dislocation of regular flights, as reported in this paper yesterday. And once again, it is lack of timely planning that would be the cause of the regular flight schedule going awry. We feel that suspending several important destinations to Saudi Arabia for our expatriate workers is a rank bad idea. Admittedly, there is a new factor for the planners to contend with, in the form of the Saudi condition that no aircraft leased after June would be allowed to operate flights to Jeddah. But while this new condition is surprising, it was laid down in early June this year, and one would have thought that there was enough time for Biman to circumvent the problem.

Not only disruption of regular flights, but Hajj flights also had been disrupted in the past for various reasons, but mostly due to poor planning and complete inability to cater for unforeseen developments which a good operator of any public service system has to safeguard against. Add to that the pervasive matter of interest of special quarters like the middlemen and a rather complex tender procedure.

We wonder why, when Hajj is a regular annual feature, the management of Biman should befaced with recurrent problems in running Hajj flights which Biman, as the national carrier, is obliged to do without affecting its normal operations. We believe timely and adequate planning and shunning of all other considerations would allow the national flag carrier to run both without affecting either.