Five passengers are suing United Airways for Tk 50 crore for not being able to fly to Malaysia when the carrier had suspended its operations without notice last week.

In the law suit filed with a Dhaka court against United, its chairman and managing director yesterday, the plaintiffs said they on September 21 bought five tickets to travel to Malaysia on September 24 for business.

They said they incurred financial losses due to the abrupt cancellation of United flights.

Secretary of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism, chairman of Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (Caab), manager (sales/admin) and manager (operation) of United Airways, and managing director of Air Star Travels and Tours Ltd, which is a travel agency they used to buy the tickets from, are also defendants of the law suit.

Judge Fazle Elahi Bhuiyan of the First Joint District Judge's Court of Dhaka fixed October 16 for hearing on whether to accept the case.

The plaintiffs are: Abu Bakar Siddique, a member of Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry; his wife Nargis Akter, a businesswoman; Mokbul Hossain, proprietor of a company; Sohanur Rahman Selim, owner of Selim Enterprise and Eureka Multipurpose Firm Ltd; and Rafiqul Islam, editor of Dhaka-based daily newspaper Bidyasagor.

The United Airways suspended its all flight operations on September 24 for an indefinite period, after the private airline's new board failed to come up with plans to keep the carrier afloat.

Some 2,300 to 2,400 inbound and outbound passengers got stranded.

Three days after the suspension of flight operations, the airliner resumed all flights on Saturday.

In their complaint, the plaintiffs said all of them went to Shahjalal International Airport on September 24 so that they could go to Malaysia and sign an agreement to form a joint venture company that would run its business on 500 acres of land in Malaysia.

They said a memorandum of understanding was supposed to be signed at the Putra World Trade Centre around 5:00pm on September 25. Malaysian state minister for fisheries and livestock Narayan Chandra Chanda was scheduled to attend the signing ceremony.

But they failed to go to Malaysia due to the flight cancellation. They had even tried to get in touch with United to urge them to take initiatives to get them to Malaysia but failed.

As they could not reach Malaysia, the Malaysia-based company lost confidence in them and backed off from the joint venture deal, the plaintiffs added.

In case of flight cancellation a passenger gets compensation as per International Air Transport Association (IATA) rules, said Kamrul Islam, deputy general manager of marketing support and public relations of the United Airways.

“The airlines will compensate the passengers as per IATA rules, if they claim damages,” he said.

He, however, declined to make any comments on the law suit filed with the court yesterday.