Two leased Bombardier Dash 8 planes arrived in Dhaka yesterday afternoon putting Biman Bangladesh Airlines on track to resume its domestic flight operations from Monday, after almost a three-year pause.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will formally release the turbo-prop Dash 8-Q400 aircraft for commercial operations on Saturday at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, says a Biman press release.

After a couple of years of trying to acquire turbo-prop aircraft, the national flag carrier

finally dry leased the planes from Egypt's Smart Aviation for five years in an effort to grab a share of the growing domestic market, now dominated by local private airlines.

Manufactured by Bombardier of Canada, the Dash 8 Q400 is a 74-seater single-isle, single-class plane.

Biman sources said the airlines would have to pay $1.68 lakh a month for each of the planes. It would also have to set aside $600 for every flying hour for maintenance.

Due to a shortage of planes, Biman had suspended operations on four of the seven domestic routes in 2007. The last route -Dhaka-Cox's Bazar - was closed in June, 2012.

Now, the airline carries passengers to and from Sylhet and Chittagong on its international flights.

When the Dash 8s are in service, Biman would add up to 25 additional flights a week to Chittagong and Sylhet, the Biman release said. It would operate six weekly flights to Cox's Bazar, five to Jessore, three each to Rajshahi and Saidpur and two to Barisal.

Biman's re-launch of domestic operations comes at a time when the local aviation market is heating up with a number of new players.

US-Bangla Airlines has already launched domestic flights with Dash 8s and Epic Airways is set to start operations by the end of the year.

Currently, four private local airlines -United Airways, Regent Airways, Novoair and US-Bangla Airlines - fly mainly on four domestic routes: Dhaka-Chittagong Dhaka-Cox's Bazar, Dhaka-Sylhet and Dhaka-Jessore.

The Dhaka-Chittagong route draws the highest volume of traffic followed by Dhaka-Jessore.

About50,000 to 55,000 passengers fly on domestic routes a month and Dhaka-Chittagong accounts for 70 percent of them.

In 2014, some 680,420 people travelled nationally by air, up 5 percent year-on-year, according to the data of Civil Aviation Authority, Bangladesh.

With the two Dash 8-Q400s, Biman's fleet now stands at 12 - four long-haul Boeing 777-300ERs, two leased Boeing 777-200ERS, two Airbus A310-300s, and two Boeing737-800s.