When the Druk Air was created in 1981, His Majesty the Fourth Druk Gyalpo could not have had any lofty commercial aspirations - not with one unpressurised 18-seater Dornier 228-200 turbo-prop aircraft and one airstrip measuring less than one-and-a-half miles long. I believe that it was His way of making a statement of nationhood - an assertion of independence - an announcement to the world that Druk Yuel was an independent nation with the necessary apparatus of nationhood in place.
Today, forty two years since, look around you - I guarantee you that you are unlikely find another Bhutanese national institution that has gobbled up more public money than the Druk Air. For those of you who care, know that Druk Air is an institution behind which the government has invested few thousand million Ngultrum of public funds - 100% Bhutanese money. And, all that money remains tied up and incapacitated - to be annually depreciated to prop up the Druk Air’s profitability on paper, instead of serving some meaningful social service for the good of the Bhutanese people.
Comparative study of DrukAir's fare as opposed to that of Qatar Airways'. Can we compete? We cannot!!! - we should not even think about it!
If public money is used to fund a public institution, it is done so that it can serve a public cause. Sadly, no Bhutanese public derives any benefit from the airline’s existence. Instead, the services of the carrier funded by public fund are priced so high that it is beyond the reach of the common Bhutanese public - the part owners of the airline. Even rich western tourists are unable to afford their services, resulting in diversion of routes and traffic to competing airlines, translating into loss of revenue for Druk Air.
Given the inherent limitations under which the airline is required to operate, profit making cannot be its mandate - it is simply impossible - unless it does so at the cost of the whole of the tourism industry. The national flag carrier can be an effective apparatus in helping others make profit; it can help boost tourism - through building of carrying capacity, through diversified routes, through efficiency of operation and rendering of dependable and timely service.
Today the management of air transport sector in Bhutan is so pathetic that I am told that we do not even have bowsers in any of our domestic airports. Thus, aircrafts are required to carry fuel for the return journey - thereby impacting carrying capacity, resulting in increased cost of operation, resulting in higher ticket cost for the Bhutanese travelers.
Today we are told that we are in an era of massive all-round transformations. That is good - it was long overdue. Now lets us put our money where our mouth is - let us see some transformation in the Druk Air. Let us prove wrong the accusation that there is private interest behind why a national apparatus of great value has been turned into a national spoiler.
To understand what a national flag carrier is all about, read the following:
IMPACT OF NON-PERFORMING NATIONAL FLAG CARRIER:
~ Loss of Revenue: through loss of traffic caused by unaffordable high airfare.
~ Loss of foreign exchange: through loss of national business to competing non-national airlines.
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