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Gulf Times Thursday, February 20, 2014

COMMENT
Chairman: Abdullah bin Khalifa al-Attiyah Editor-in-Chief : Darwish S Ahmed Production Editor: C P Ravindran

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GULF TIMES BCCI cant escape responsibility for poor show abroad
It has been almost three years since India have won a Test abroad, a dismal record for a team who not so long ago had scaled the summit in the ICC rankings and are still ranked second in the world, courtesy their enviable record in home conditions. But after losing the two-match Test series in New Zealand on Tuesday, it looks like it is back to basics for M S Dhoni and Company. Dhoni was one of those rare characters in world sport who was at once amboyant and cool. Both qualities now seem to have deserted him. To make matters worse he no longer seems to have the stomach for a ght. In New Zealand, it was obvious Dhoni was weighed down heavily by an uncharacteristic fear of losing. At crucial junctures in the second Test match in Wellington, he resorted to defensive tactics, thus allowing New Zealand to consolidate. After bundling out New Zealand for less than 200 in the rst innings and taking a huge lead, India eventually had to scramble to save the Test after Kiwi skipper Brendon McCullum became the rst player from his country to score a triple century. India have not won a Test overseas since June 2011, when they beat West Indies in the rst match in Jamaica and clinched the series after the next two games were drawn. They have since lost nine and drawn two of their 11 overseas matches and with a team in transition after the retirement of greats Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman, are struggling to make an impact on foreign shores. In New Zealand, India did not win a single game, losing the vematch one-day series 4-0 with one game tied, and while they had chances to win both Tests, were unable to take their opportunities. Understandably, Dhoni has come in for a lot of ak. Some former greats want him sacked as Test captain, others say he needs to be at the helm for the tour of England and Australia later this year. However, it would make sense if Dhoni quits Test cricket for good and concentrate only on the shorter formats in which he virtually has no peers. The burden of captaining the country in all three formats has affected his game and added to his age. In the nal analysis, however, the Board of Control for Cricket in India cannot escape responsibility for the teams overseas performances. Over the years, it has not done anything practical to nurture talent, instead using its resources to arm-twist other nations to fall in line with its policies. The IPL it has created has also had a negative impact on the quality of players. Theres hardly any fast bowling talent in India. In fact it wont be an exaggeration to say there are fast bowlers of better quality in city-level cricket in Pakistan. Strangely, even the quality of spin bowling has gone down drastically. Ravichandran Ashwin, the spinning mainstay in home conditions, has been a passenger on most overseas tours and nobody seems to be coming up the ranks. The BCCI should address these issues on a priority basis. But then it is asking too much of the worlds richest cricket body, preoccupied as it is with dirty politics and an unhealthy tendency to view the game and the players as its slave.

The worlds last remaining DC10 passenger jet on its final journey today.

End of the road of a workhorse and blessing for an old timer

The DC10 is on the last leg of an illustrious ying career as it ends commercial passenger service with a ight from Dhaka to Birmingham
the auspices of the Orbis charity. Doctors and nurses perform surgery onboard as the aircraft, equipped with an operation theatre positioned between the wings, ies to mainly under privileged nations to cater for those needing treatment. However, succession planning has seen newer, more fuel-efficient aircraft taking over. The fuel-guzzling DC10 was gradually off-loaded to airlines in Africa, taken out of service completely, sold as scrap metal or and even parked in the vast aircraft graveyard that sits in the California desert. Production halted in 1989 and spare parts became increasingly hard to come by. Todays farewell to the DC10 is by a lesser known operator, Biman Bangladesh Airlines. Not an airline that immediately catches ones imagination. But Biman is making the most of the occasion. With scant publicity over the years, the state-owned carrier is milking PR surrounding the departure of the last DC10 as it welcomes a newlook, wide body eet made up of the Boeing 777. Out With the Old, In With the New as Biman promotes a fresh era in the countrys aviation industry: nal phasing out of its DC10s which have been the backbone of the airlines long-haul programme for 30 years. The demise of the DC10 has put things into perspective: with an all-Economy seating for 314 passengers, a stark contrast between old and new for the ailing airline, which pledges to make change for the better. For the rst time in its 42-year history, the airline has brought in foreign management to help reverse the airlines poor fortunes. Since formation, Biman has been in and out of hospital, treated for wounds that sadly were unable to fully heal with permanent scars that have made it difficult to get into shape and a t state. It has suffered from a plethora of problems ranging from mismanagement, corrupt practices, inefficiency, poor punctuality averaging 30%, inadequate scheduling, no processes nor systems, no staff appraisals, lack of service at every consumer touch point, no product investment, no structured departments, a recruitment freeze for more than three years, cumbersome decision-making through committees and malicious bookings by travel agents over the years that have cost the airline millions of dollars every year. The airline had a history of launching routes, then suspending them, all down to lack of foresight and inadequate analysis of potential route performance. Without basic systems in place to address problems, issues just escalated. It adopted short-term strategies of leasing aircraft at peak times such as Haj rather than invest in its own. Bimans statistics are not good reading. Only seven aircraft in its eet after the removal of todays last DC10; a ratio of 400 employees per aircraft when the industry average is around 200; only 1.8mn passengers own each year; and only 1% of bookings made online when the industry is seeing in excess of 30%. The list is endless. A poor showing for an airline thats been around for so many years, particularly in todays fast-paced aviation environment. The above combined is a recipe for disaster. Biman has managed to somehow pull through but for how long can it balance on a tight rope? Led by managing director and chief executive officer Kevin Steele, the team of exBritish Airways professionals is embedded at the airlines airport headquarters in Dhaka to work on the turnaround. Steele, who took the helm of the airline in March 2013 on a two-year contract, was mandated to x the airline from the bottom up. With years of experience in the subcontinent working at British Airways, he knows all too well the challenging environment he is in, but relishes the task of breathing life in the airline and distance it from the butt of industry jokes. By his own admission, the man of steel says Biman needs xing badly and quickly as some areas are grossly inefficient due largely to a lack of systems in place. I am used to going into an airline and changing things around. Its no different here, he says, pointing to a strategic need to turn in a prot within two years and potentially go to privatisation after three successive years of protability. I have worked for a number of airlines in my career but never have I come across an airline that does not have a revenue management system, he adds. He refers to the basic tool any airline must have to manage pricing of seats in different booking classes on every ight in order to maximise revenue earned. By forecasting demand based on historical data, an airline is able to adjust pricing levels for each seat sold to secure the best possible yield difference between cost and revenue, which in turn paves the way for operational protability or loss. A two-year strategy he presented to the prime minister within weeks of joining outlined the need to double the eet to 15 aircraft, increase frequency to existing destinations and add new international routes in North America, Europe and Asia to support 18 current destinations and, more importantly, re-launch domestic ights suspended due to a lack of aircraft. In the Middle East, the eight destinations of Abu Dhabi, Doha, Dubai, Kuwait, Muscat, Jeddah, Riyadh, Dammam represent almost half of Bimans entire network. The nature of the traffic is largely labour movement. Like the global operations, most of the routes operate via points rather than non-stop to and from Dhaka, which the Biman management wants to x to make it more appealing to a cross section of the travelling public. Over the next 12 months, route start-ups are planned to Frankfurt, New York, Toronto, Tokyo, Ho Chi Minh City and Guangzhou and Kunming in China, Male, Colombo and Karachi. As part of a longer 10-year plan submitted by Steele, endorsed by the International Monetary Fund to ensure it is robust and sustainable, a further doubling of the eet to 30 aircraft and a host of new routes are earmarked by 2023. The current seven-strong eet comprises three Boeing 777 aircraft two of which have been leased from another airline two Boeing 737s and two Airbus A310s. In 2007, Biman ordered 10 Boeing 777 aircraft from the manufacturer, the rst of which arrived direct from Boeing earlier this month, full with the amenities one would expect of an airline today. A sophisticated inight entertainment system for every passenger, at Business Class seating, revamped menus designed by a celebrity chef and a fresh look at inight service among others. In recent months, the corporate website has been re-launched, a new in-ight duty free programme implemented, a frequent yer scheme introduced and the website enhanced to offer more booking functionality. It literally has been building from scratch and getting rid of dated processes and procedures which, by admission of the new management, have been poorly handled over the years. The ailing airline needed to get better to be competitive. With only 40% of the work completed so far, Steele still has a huge shopping list to complete. Creating a new domestic operation by bringing in new aircraft this year; setting up joint ventures with internationally-reputed companies in airport ground handling and cargo handling; and signing code share marketing deals with airlines to provide passengers with more choice. On the DC10, he says the aircraft has long performed its best. Airlines quietly pull older aircraft from service every day and generally are never seen again. However, as a lover of aviation, l think the retirement of the DC10 is something special and deserves a more tting send-off to an aviation museum. There may be tears shed for the old warrior, but a new beginning is what cash-strapped Biman has aspired towards for years if it is to survive a ercely competitive world out there. Removing the DC10 is perhaps truly the start of a new era. Updesh Kapur is a PR & communications professional, columnist, aviation, hospitality and travel analyst. He can be contacted at updeshkapur@gmail.com and followed on twitter:@updeshkapur)

By Updesh Kapur Doha

India have not won a Test overseas since June 2011 when they beat the West Indies

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oday marks an historic moment in the world of commercial aviation and the Gulf will be very much part of this landmark occasion. A wide body passenger jet is scheduled to touch down in the UK this afternoon following an 8,000km journey from Asia. Its no ordinary aircraft. Not the much-talked about Airbus A380 superjumbo, nor a Boeing 747 and not even the US aircraft manufacturers most successful jet to date, the 777. We have to go back in time just over four decades ago when the DC10, a popular plane of its era, made its debut across the US skies. Today, the aircraft is on the last leg of an illustrious ying career as it ends commercial passenger service with a ight from the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka to Birmingham via a refuelling stop en route in Kuwait City allowing more customers to board. Aviation buffs from around the world have dug deep into their pockets ying all the way to the subcontinent and to Kuwait to check-in for a coveted boarding pass and the nal scheduled commercial ight on this unique aircraft. An iconic jet that features three engines, one mounted on the tail n, and a cockpit without the gizmo electronics, systems and computers we see on todays modern jets. Traditionally a workhorse, this is an aircraft utilised for hours on end to maximum revenue returns and miles own during a 24-hour cycle. A hybrid between the four-engine 747 jumbo and subsequent successor two-engine 777s, the DC10 proudly formed the backbone of some airlines wide body eets traversing the worlds air corridors. The likes of American Airlines, Dutch carrier KLM, Garuda Indonesia, Turkish Airlines, the former Swissair, Air New Zealand and Korean Air are among a host of international carriers to y DC10 passenger aircraft, alongside numerous cargo-only operators. Only 386 DC10 passenger jets were built during a 21-year production period from 1968 with a further 60 dedicated cargo planes and tankers manufactured specically for the US Air Force for aerial refuelling missions and transporting shipments. The aircraft suffered a turbulent history in the early part of its life, involved in more than 50 incidents and accidents, including nine hijackings that marred its reputation. Subsequent design changes brought signicant improvements in aerodynamics, avionics and ight control systems that led to more reliability, more efficiency, more comfort and more consumer condence. It has own over 25mn hours of commercial operations since the inaugural ight by American Airlines from Los Angeles to Chicago in 1971. Whats now left of the ageing jets of different variants are dedicated freighters and selected charters. One has even been converted into an eye hospital ying around the world under

As a lover of aviation, l think the retirement of the DC10 is something special

Last week, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina presided over a colourful ceremony to bid farewell to Bimans oldest asset which strangely enough bears the name New Era and greet the arrival of its newest, fresh from Boeings assembly plant in Seattle. More than 500 guests saw the two aircraft parked near each other separated by a stage as guest speakers showered praise on both the old and new kids on the block. Compare it to an ageing rock band ready to call it a day, Biman is lapping up the limelight with a DC10 Farewell Tour after the aircrafts arrival in Birmingham. Aviation geeks have been snapping up places for specially chartered DC10 scenic tours over England this weekend before the aircraft makes its ultimate stop a nal resting place at an aviation museum in the East Midlands village of Bruntingthorpe in Britain. Bimans three abandoned DC10s remain parked at Dhakas Shahjalal International Airport waiting to be scrapped. For those used to luxury travel, wide seats, fully reclining business seats and individual personal screen inight entertainment systems, the Biman DC10 experience is not for you. The interior decor remains drab with little change to the gaudy red, orange, brown and green ower colour scheme introduced back in 1983. Torn seats, broken arm rests, shabby galleys certainly not for the faint-hearted. Remember the overhead projectors of yesteryear beaming movies onto a pull down white screen in each cabin? Biman had it all. But hey, this is in itself a unique experience seeing rst hand how an airline has remained static, doing very little to spruce up its image for years.

Bimans DC10 in 1983. Nothing has changed since then.