STAFF CORRESPONDENT

The jet crash at Milestone School and College in Uttara’s Diabari is a wake-up call to prevent similar incidents in the future, said speakers at a seminar yesterday.

The seminar, titled “Aviation Emergencies and Civil Risk: Rethinking Disaster Preparedness in Bangladesh”, was organised by The Bangladesh Monitor, a fortnightly journal, at a Dhaka hotel.

Capt Tanvir Khurshid, chief of technical at Biman Bangladesh Airlines, said commercial flights regularly face difficulties, including holding aircraft in the sky due to military operations on the lone runway at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.

“Things become critical during bad weather,” he said, adding that flights often miss slots at foreign airports because of delays caused by military aircraft operations at Dhaka airport.

He suggested that military training flights could be shifted to other airports instead of using one in the densely populated capital. “We don’t see joint military-civil operations on a single runway in other countries,” he noted.

Capt Tanvir also said while Dhaka airport previously handled a small number of flights, around 350 flights now operate daily.

He warned that joint military-civil operations on a single runway could increase the risk of mid-air collisions.

Mofizur Rahman, managing director of Novoair, In

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