Biman Breaks Its Boeing-Only Jet Fleet with a 10-Plane Airbus Order
The order for four A350-900s and six A321neos marks the first break from Biman's all-Boeing passenger fleet as the airline seeks to recover market share.
Dhaka, 8 October — Biman Bangladesh Airlines signed on Wednesday to buy 10 Airbus jets, ending years in which its passenger jets came only from Boeing and opening a mixed fleet the government says is needed if the flag carrier is to hold more of its own market.
The order is four A350-900 widebodies and six A321neo narrowbodies. Airbus confirmed it the same evening. The A350-900 is a long-range twin-aisle aircraft, intended for routes to Europe, the Middle East and, eventually, North America. The A321neo is a single-aisle jet for regional and medium-haul flying from Dhaka, the kind of sectors where Biman has been losing passengers to foreign carriers with newer aircraft and more frequencies.
Biman board chairman Rumee A. Hossain and Jürgen Westermeier, president and managing director of Airbus India and South Asia, signed at Utshab Hall in the Radisson Blu Dhaka Water Garden. The ceremony was titled "Spreading Our Wings Together." Civil Aviation and Tourism Minister M. Rashiduzzaman Millat and State Minister for Foreign Affairs Humayun Kabir witnessed it, with Invest Bangladesh executive chairman Ashik Chowdhury also present.
Millat used the event to repeat a figure he has cited before: Biman carries only about 20 percent of air passengers to and from Bangladesh. The rest fly on foreign airlines. A larger, newer fleet, he said, is how the national carrier is supposed to take back share. Managing director and chief executive Kaizer Sohel Ahmed has described the split the same way in comments carried by the trade press: the A350s for long haul, the A321neos for the range and flexibility to open regional markets.
The contract price was not published. People close to the talks put the package above $2 billion. Delivery dates are also unsettled in public. Industry reports after the signing said the first aircraft could arrive from 2030, and that Dhaka has asked Airbus to bring some forward. In late September, Millat had told reporters the first Airbus jets would come from 2033, with the rest through 2036 or 2037. Until Airbus and Biman publish a schedule, both timelines are still in circulation.
Wednesday's signing was later than the government wanted. In July, Millat said the agreement would be done by 31 August. That date passed. On 29 September he told journalists at the Secretariat that the buy was still on and would be signed in October. Airbus had earlier offered a larger package, reported at 14 aircraft, and cut it to the four-plus-six mix after Biman committed to Boeing.
That Boeing side is the bigger half of the expansion. On 30 April Biman ordered 14 Boeing jets — eight 787-10s, two 787-9s and four 737-8s — in a deal industry reports valued at about $3.7 billion. On 23 September it added 11 more: five 787-10s and six 737-8s. Reuters described that second tranche as 11 Dreamliners and 737 MAX aircraft. Counted together, the Boeing orders and the new Airbus order give Biman a purchase pipeline of 35 jets.
The airline those planes are meant to replace, or sit beside, is small. Biman's current fleet is 19 aircraft: four Boeing 777-300ERs, four 787-8s, two 787-9s, four 737-800s and five De Havilland Dash 8-400 turboprops. The jets are all Boeing. The Airbus order is the first break in that pattern.
The gap in time is the practical problem. Boeing deliveries on the 2026 orders are scheduled to start in November 2031 and run through 2035. Airbus deliveries, on the public accounts, are no earlier than 2030 and may be later. Neither stream helps next summer's schedule. Biman has been trying to lease about 10 aircraft for the interim. Millat has said that search has not yet produced planes.
The political framing in Dhaka is capacity and market share, not a switch of suppliers. Officials describe the Airbus buy as sitting alongside the Boeing orders, not instead of them. For passengers, the test is simpler and further away: whether aircraft signed in a Dhaka hotel in October 2026 are actually on the ramp before the mid-2030s, and whether a carrier with a fifth of the market can turn a paper fleet of 35 into frequencies people choose over the foreign airlines that already fly the same routes.