BIMAN BANGLADESH: Are They Really That Bad?

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👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/Raiyan23 📅︎︎ Mar 17 2020 🗫︎ replies
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- I wasn't supposed to be taking this flight today. Now I was supposed to be taking a flight today, with Turkmenistan Airlines across to Bangkok. But I found out last night that, they cancelled my flight and left me with no way of getting there. Brilliant. So after much faffing, last night I was able to find a flight that they would take me to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, with Biman Bangladesh Airlines. This video is brought to you by DashLane. I honestly didn't know what to expect with Biman. I mean, just look at their reviews. Avoid. Never take Biman. Disaster. May God help this airline. Ouch! The bad reviews went on and on. Just how bad was this airline? I didn't know. But I did know that I had to find out. Biman don't offer online check-in, so I headed to the check-in desk, which was pretty crowded even three hours out. Most passengers seemed to be carrying several large boxes, to check in. - Hello - All right, yeah. - That's all I was doing. - Ha, ha, ha, ha. Awesome. - And you are here today - I'm here today. So there you go. Ha, ha, ha, ha. - Nice and well, it's actually an honor. - Thanks very much. - This will go on my suitcase. - Ha, ha, ha, ha. - You've got no luggage? - No, just hand luggage so. - Coz you're probably the only passenger with just a hand bag - I know. I'll give you a little bit less weight to take in there. - Nice to meet you. See you, give my love to the rest. - I will do. Thank you very much. Nice to meet you and I'll see you soon. - You will. - Thanks a lot, bye. So checked in by the lovely Kieran, who is actually a viewer of the channel. That was so pretty cool. Nice to meet you Kieran. And now, time to head to the departure gate via of course the lounge. So let's head and find out what it's like. So off to find the Plaza premium lounge here at Heathrow terminal four, let's go and see where it is. The Plaza premium lounge is used by Biman as well as some other airlines including Qatar Airways. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's not a bad lounge as contract lounges go, and it's pretty comfortable with some good views across the apron. So not a bad view here at the Plaza premium lounge at Heathrow terminal 4 as contract lounges go, it's not too bad, either. Quite a lot of space around, decent selection of food and drink too. So, that's not bad. The sign says go to gate but, we're still quite a bit early, yeah. So, So here's the first flight of the trip down to Kuala Lumpur. It's a Boeing 787-9 that Biman only had for about a month now. There's no pictures or videos or anything, about their business class product on the 787-9. So I have absolutely no idea, what it's going to to look like when I get on board. So first like then, on the 787 will be to Dhaka in Bangladesh, with a stop, I believe in a place called Sylhet, which is in Northern Bangladesh. I think they drop a lot of passengers off there, and then we make a short, like half an hour trip down to Dhaka from there. So let's go and get on board. - Hello. How are you? - Hi, You? - Yeah good thank you. - Thank you - Thanks very much. Cheers. It was time to head down the jet bridge to see just what Biman 787-9 was like. - Hello, hello, hello. Seven on the front. - Yeah. - Thank you. Saying I was surprised with the layout, was a bit of an understatement. The 787-8 had just the 2-2-2 configuration, whereas the -9, has this incredible suite configuration. The seat is actually the BE Aerospace Super Diamond seat, as seen on lots of other airlines, such as Qatar Airways, American and even British Airways who have added a door and called it the Club Suite. So on board, and wow, this is totally, not what I was expecting. It's really nice configuration and a 1-2-1, with a the little suites at the sides, and the two suites in the middle. We got a nice big TV there, a little TV on remote there with power and everything. Literature and stuff at the back. It's really good. Proper flatbed as well. Looking forward to this flight immensely now. We've got about eight hours I think, but actually it's 10 hours. We've got that stop in Sylhet on the way as well. So I've been handed out so far headphones, my amenity kit, I'll go through that in a little while and finally, the most important thing, the menu. Dinner tonight was a salad to start, followed by a choice of chicken curry, lamb or salmon. Of course, being on Biman, I needed to take the Bangladeshi curry. The first of many on this trip. Breakfast was a choice of chicken tikka or chicken bhuna. Headphones weren't bad quality. I didn't bother using my Bose headphones on this flight. The amenity kit was well presented and pretty well stocked. It came complete with all the usual amenities, as well as a bottle of mouthwash that I thought was a nice touch. The eye mask however, was a little bit basic, and I ended up using my BA one, that I take with me all the time. Before push-back there was a snack of peanuts, cashews and canapés that just screamed out, "Here comes the airplane!" The jet bridge was disconnected and we pushed back ready for the flight to Bangladesh. - Welcome to... - The taxi out to 27R at Heathrow is a long one from Terminal 4. It involves waiting to cross the South runway, before taxying the length of Heathrow. Eventually we lined up and got on our way, for the eight hour flight to Sylhet. For an eight hour flight, the takeoff was incredibly long and we only rotated by Terminal 5. I wondered whether we'll been taking the M25 to Bangladesh tonight. Thanks to fellow aviation YouTuber, "Inflight with James", for videoing my take-off from the ground. Our route tonight took us East from London, across Germany and Eastern Europe. We crossed the Black Sea towards Turkey, before crossing the Caspian States of Georgia and Azerbaijan. From there, we cross Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan before starting on descent over Northern India into Bangladesh. Flight time tonight, was 8 hours 53 minutes, at a cruising altitude of 35, 37 and 39,000 feet. I was impressed that there was wifi on the flight, and at a reasonable price too. It was pretty quick too. I got done at speeds of 25 Mb on this flight. The In-flight entertainment was pretty decent. There was a good choice of Hindi and Bangla movies, with a few Western movies too. There was also live TV with news channels, such as BBC, CNN, and NHK available to watch live. I settled on finishing a movie that I started watching on a previous flight. An excellent Hindi movie, "Dhadak". I thought it was interesting that the headphones had a note asking us to be careful with them as they were national property. Considering Biman recently tracked down and took legal action against some passengers who damaged the TV screen on a 787, I opted to be particularly careful with the headphones on this flight. Pretty soon the dinner service started. Salad was delicious, but the Bangladeshi chicken curry was incredible. On the flight, your taste buds are generally desensitized a little bit. This spicy curry was still really spicy yet delicious. After dinner, I took a cheese course and a traditional cup of green tea, which finished the dinner perfectly. Wait, So it's now, about three hours after take off, arriving into Sylhet in about six hours time. So I'm going to try and get a little bit of sleep, on this flight, and see how far before Sylhet I get woken up. Flat bed's pretty comfortable, nice, decent size. I'm certainly able to lay down straight, which is always a bonus. So, yeah let's try get some sleep, and I will speak to you in the morning. Good night. Good morning. It's broad daylight. I just have hope, we are landing at Sylhet. Had a very comfortable night's sleep actually. I slept pretty much all the way through. Very comfortable... We started our approach into Sylhet, and touchdown 30 minutes ahead of schedule, at Osmani International Airport. We had about an hour on the ground in Sylhet where it seemed the majority of passengers were getting off. So we're on the ground then here in Sylhet, Osmani International Airport. I think we've got about an hour here. I think they are just offloading the passengers, and then we continue for the short 40 minutes or so down to Dhaka. So far, I have to say, really enjoying Biman, they're really good. The seat is pretty decent. The service has been fantastic too. Soon we began our push back before being promptly towed back onto the stand. - Ladies and gentlemen this is, and we are very sorry for this inconvenience, thank you. - We've pushed back from the stand, and then we've been towed back on to the stand, we've just heard there's a sick passenger on board and they've been able to take him off so. So, they put us back on Stand. Let's try again. Second time lucky, and we taxed it out for a rocky departure, for the 25 minute flight now to Dhaka. Our route for this leg took us direct towards Dhaka, before following a DME arc into Dhaka Airport. Flight time for this leg, was 25 minutes at a cruising altitude of 60,000 feet. In no time at all, we were commencing our approach into Bangladesh's capital city Dhaka. We touched down smoothly right on time, even with the passenger having been offloaded in Sylhet. Thanks very much. - Bye bye. - Thank you, Bye bye. Nice to meet you, thank you. I plan to get a visa on arrival, and meet up with some local sports in Dhaka, but it soon became clear, that wouldn't be happening. Okay, so plans have kind of gone a little bit, so wrong here at Dhaka. I was actually going to meet up with some, Bangladeshi spotters here at Dhaka Airport. They were going to take me around, and show me some cool viewing places, but I've just found out that I can't actually leave the airport. They do a visa on arrival, but with my flight only being at seven o'clock tonight. They won't do me a transit visa or anything. They won't do me a full visa because I'm booked on a flight straight out. So, unfortunately, I'm trapped here at the airport, like Tom Hanks in the Terminal, for the next seven hours. It's not too bad. I'm going to try find the lounge. Apparently there is a nice lounge here. So, I'm going to head over there and find lounge, try and find a way to while away the next seven hours or so, ahead of my next flight to Kuala Lumpur. Hello? - Hi. - Now that Biman wouldn't let me get a visa leave the airport, I headed to the Maslin lounge, to chill out ahead of my next flight. It's a pretty small lounge with only a basic range of food and drink, but there was still some nice curry for breakfast. So seeing as I've got like seven hours here, at the Maslin lounge at Dhaka, I found this little nap room. It's just a couple of little beds. So am going to try to get some sleep, because I'm still exhausted. So, hopefully get a bit of sleep and I won't be quite as grumpy the next flight. While am waiting in the lounge, I'd like to say a big shout out to the sponsor of this video, Dashlane. Dashlane makes it super easy to securely store all of your passwords, cards and important documents and access them on the go. It allows you to quickly generate a unique, highly secure password for each website you visit, and auto fills them on your devices, so you never have to remember a password again. It's far more secure than reusing the same password with different numbers at the end over and over again. It also makes it really easy to fill in your card details. Whenever you make an online purchase, which is really handy for me, as I can just click and fill in my card details without having to go rooting through my wallet. Aside from cards, it stores things like your passport. So wherever I am in the world, I can just open the app, and pull down my passport details. Great for when I'm trying to check in online or apply for E Visas when they want to know every last tiny detail of your life. Before I was lucky enough to do this as a full-time job. I worked in IT security for years. Password managers like Dashlane are regarded by experts to be the safest, most secure way to generate and protect your online credentials. Even if Dashlane were to get hacked, it will be like breaking into a bank, but not being able to open any of the volts. Only you have the key to your volt, to your master password, which Dashlane don't have. And you have to enter it on your laptop or phone, to get access to your passwords. So try the exclusive offer of getting Dashlane for free on your first device at dashlane.com/noel. And then when you want to upgrade to premium, which you will, use my code Noel to get 25% off. All right, time to head down to the gate. Flight will be boarding in the next kind of 15, 20 minutes. So let's go. So I was expecting a 737-800 for this flight, that's what was scheduled. And it's what I've picked my seat on and everything, but I just got to the gate and there's a 777 parked outside. We received call for boarding. And I joined the other passengers, plying down the jet bridge to the plane. This didn't go quite as smoothly though, and an irate member of staff sent everybody quickly back to the jet bridge. Kuala Lumpur? - Yes. It turned out we'd been sent to the wrong plane, and we waited back in the gate area for the right plane. Eventually though it was time to do take two at boarding. Biman board economy class first and business class last, which is the first time that I've ever come across this. It kind of makes sense. It gives you longer to relax in the airport, and means that you don't have a plane full of passengers, pushing past you after you board. But I can imagine some westerners not being quite as happy as being pushed to the back of the queue. There's a dedicated business class mini bus out of the plane, and we teasingly drove straight past the 777 and 787 on the rump, to the 737 that sat behind it. This one was delivered to American Trans Air, in 2001 before going on to Brazilian Airline Gol in 2005. In 2010, she was bought by Biman. On board the 737-800 has a 2-2 configuration in business class with these lovely big armchairs. So this is not a 777. This is a 737, as planned. Anyway on board, the Biman 737 down to Kuala Lumpur. I snacked on some nuts, before we pushed back from the gate. And before long we pushed back and headed out to the runway. The route for this last sector, then took us South from Bangladesh into my Myanmar, before crossing Thailand and down into Malaysia. Flight time tonight was three hours and 33 minutes at a cruising altitude of 37,000 feet. So then airborne from Dhaka on the Biman 737-800. And this is really comfortable. It's like flying in the olden days with the old armchair, reclining seats. It's really comfy, especially for just a two or three hour flight. I'm not sure, I'd want to do any longer on it, but, for three hour flight, this is really good. They just going to be taking my dinner order. So I've taken another chicken curry. It's amazing. Dinner service tonight was a salad to start, and then another chicken curry for the main course. Once again, it was really nice. Thanks very much. The crew are really nice on this flight, as they were on the last one. And I've just noticed, that I'm coming out with a bit of a cold at the moment, and they brought around something, and she said to try this, because it's really good for dealing with a cold, apparently. And it clears the open, makes you feel better right away. I'm not entirely sure what it is. It has some sort of sesame oil in it. Maybe my Bangladeshi viewers can enlighten me a little bit more as to what it is, but I'm going to try and see. If it really does make me feel, any better. Wow. I can see why it clears up your cold. Jesus. Seeking something a little less lively. I finished dinner with a cup of tea. In the bathroom, there were hints of this aircraft's former life in Brazil, in the form of signs written in Portuguese. Interestingly, there was also a mop, which is the first time, I've ever seen this in an aircraft bathroom. Eventually we started a descent and the bright lights of Kuala Lumpur appeared below. My flight to Kuala Lumpur today cost me 1,172 pounds, or just over 1500 U.S. dollars. This is for a distance of 6,748 miles, giving a cost per mile of 17 pounds. Thanks very much. Thank you. I want to tell people I was going to be flying on Biman Bangladesh. I was told to expect massive delays, beaten up old aircraft, and terrible service. Being there well, they're actually really good. The flights were all on time. The aircraft were amazing, especially that 787, incredible business class on that. The service was absolutely incredible, and the crew were just, well amazing in every single way. I really enjoyed that trip with Biman Bangladesh, and I hope you did too. Thanks so much for watching take care, and I'll see you next time.
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Channel: Noel Philips
Views: 815,163
Rating: 4.8659978 out of 5
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Id: 0ZGa959XNXw
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Length: 25min 38sec (1538 seconds)
Published: Sat Feb 22 2020
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