DHAKA, April 30 (Reuters) – Bangladesh is set to sign a deal on Thursday to buy 14 aircraft from U.S. planemaker Boeing, officials said, a \u200cmove that marks a shift away from Europe’s Airbus amid trade pressure \u200cfrom Washington.<\/p>\n
Officials did not disclose the value of the deal, which will provide a mix of narrow-body and \u200bwide-body aircraft to Biman Bangladesh Airlines as the national carrier looks to modernise its fleet and expand capacity to meet rising demand.<\/p>\n
The agreement is expected to be signed on Thursday evening in Dhaka, an official from the aviation ministry and an official from Biman \u200csaid. They spoke on condition \u2060of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.<\/p>\n
The aircraft will be delivered in phases, but more financial and \u2060technical details were not disclosed.<\/p>\n
Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside its usual business hours.<\/p>\n
The agreement ends a prolonged contest between Boeing and Airbus for Biman\u2019s \u200bnext \u200bmajor order, with both manufacturers vying for a \u200blarger presence in South Asia\u2019s \u200cgrowing aviation market.<\/p>\n
Under the previous government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh had approved plans to buy 10 aircraft from Airbus although no final agreement had been signed. Following her government\u2019s fall during the 2024 mass uprising, the interim administration shifted course in favour of Boeing.<\/p>\n
Officials said the decision reflects not only fleet requirements but also larger trade \u200cconsiderations. Bangladesh is trying to ease pressure from \u200ba roughly $6 billion trade imbalance with the United \u200bStates and avoid potential tariff increases \u200bthat could hit its export-driven economy, particularly the garment industry.<\/p>\n
The fleet \u200cexpansion also coincides with broader upgrades to \u200bBangladesh’s aviation infrastructure, \u200bincluding a new terminal at Dhaka airport, aimed at handling rising passenger traffic driven by a growing middle class and a large overseas workforce.<\/p>\n
The 54-year-old Biman \u200bhas a fleet of more \u200cthan 20 aircraft, mostly Boeing planes, more than half of which are \u200bwide-bodies. It also has a number of Dash-8 turboprops.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Ruma Paul; \u200bEditing by YP Rajesh and Kate Mayberry)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DHAKA, April 30 (Reuters) – Bangladesh is set to sign a deal on Thursday to buy 14 aircraft…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[90,6434,6433,1166,6971],"class_list":{"0":"post-8206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-airbus","8":"tag-airbus","9":"tag-bangladesh","10":"tag-biman-bangladesh-airlines","11":"tag-boeing","12":"tag-prime-minister-sheikh-hasina"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}