NovoAir

Is NovoAir safe?

NovoAir has a clean accident record: no crash, no aircraft written offHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary and no deaths since its first flight in January 2013. We score it 66, between US-Bangla (59), which had a fatal crash in 2018, and Biman Bangladesh (68). The catch is everything around that record. NovoAir flies a small fleet of older ATR 72-500 turboprops that it has been trying to sell since 2024, its landing gear has failed in public view, and it works under a regulator that the FAA rates Category 2FAA IASAThe US FAA's check of whether a country's aviation regulator meets ICAO standards. Category 1 means it does; Category 2 means it does not.More in the glossary and that publishes few reports. NovoAir is also not an IATA member, so we cannot confirm that it has passed an IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary audit.

Thirteen years without an accident

NovoAir began with two Embraer 145 jets on 9 January 2013 and later replaced them with ATR 72-500s. The Aviation Safety Network has no accident on record for it under either type. For a domestic airline that lands at small airports in monsoon weather, that matters.

It is a small sample, though. NovoAir has never flown more than about seven aircraft, and for most of its life all of them have flown the same five or six domestic routes. Thirteen years at that size is far fewer flights than the top band of our rubric needs, which is why the accident factor stops at 88.

The landing gear problem

The events that did happen involve the landing gear. On 17 November 2021 an ATR 72-500 (S2-AHF) landed at Saidpur from Dhaka with 69 passengers and four crew. As the nose wheel touched the runway, the aircraft began to shake hard. The nose gear had turned 90 degrees and both nose tyres burst. The pilot held the aircraft on the centreline with brakes and rudder, and nobody was hurt. Bangladesh's accident investigators rated it a serious incident, and the army had to remove the aircraft so the runway could reopen. We found no published final report.

Twice, in May 2016 and again on 3 July 2026, the gear would not retract after take-off from Dhaka and the crew flew back. The 2026 flight, VQ-935 to Cox's Bazar, circled for about 40 minutes before landing safely. The prime minister's adviser on civil aviation was on board and called afterwards for stricter airworthiness checks of older aircraft at private airlines. A return like that is the right decision, and these events say more about the age of the fleet than about the crews. The 2016 return falls just outside our ten-year window, but two gear events since 2021, one of them a serious incident, still score lower than a clean list. The incidents factor is 52, level with Biman's.

An airline under financial pressure

In June 2024 NovoAir put all five of its ATR 72-500s up for sale. It wanted to switch to Airbus A321s and later A320s, but could not find any. In May 2025 ch-aviation counted five ATRs, of which only three had flown in April; one had been parked at Dhaka since September 2022. The airline stopped all flights on 2 May 2025 and resumed on 21 May. ch-aviation reported that it owed local banks about 1.5 billion taka.

Money trouble does not make an airline unsafe by itself, but it puts pressure on maintenance and spare parts. That is why we look at the fleet and the incidents together. The ATR 72-500 is a proven turboprop. However, it is the model ATR replaced with the 72-600, so NovoAir's aircraft are not young, and the company does not publish their ages. The fleet scores 45.

In January 2026 NovoAir said it hoped to lease jets in Dublin and start six international routes, to Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Dubai, Sharjah and Muscat, by the middle of the year. We have not seen them start. In 2026 it also wet-leased one ATR to US-Bangla, so some US-Bangla domestic flights are flown by NovoAir crews.

Oversight

The FAA's April 2025 list rates Bangladesh Category 2FAA IASAThe US FAA's check of whether a country's aviation regulator meets ICAO standards. Category 1 means it does; Category 2 means it does not.More in the glossary, which means the FAA found that the regulator does not meet ICAO standards. Bangladesh is not on the EU Air Safety ListEU Air Safety ListThe European Commission's list of airlines banned or restricted from flying in EU airspace because they do not meet international safety standards.More in the glossary. Biman, US-Bangla and Air Astra are IATA members and hold IOSA registrationIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary; NovoAir is not on the member list. We score its oversight 55, about five points below its IOSA-registered rivals, as we do for other airlines without an audit.

Flying NovoAir: what to consider

• Check that your flight is still on the schedule. NovoAir has cut routes before. In April 2026 it named four destinations from Dhaka; Jessore, Rajshahi and Kolkata, which it used to fly, were not among them. In 2025 it stopped all flights for three weeks at short notice.
• Saidpur and Cox's Bazar are the harder airports. Saidpur's runway is short, and Cox's Bazar gets heavy monsoon weather. Delays and diversions there are normal.
• A gear-up return is not an emergency to fear. If the crew says the gear will not retract, they will burn off fuel and land back at Dhaka. Follow the crew's instructions and keep your seatbelt on until the aircraft stops.

How we scored it

The accident record (88) is NovoAir's strength: 13 years without an accident, on a small fleet. The weak points are oversight (55: Category 2FAA IASAThe US FAA's check of whether a country's aviation regulator meets ICAO standards. Category 1 means it does; Category 2 means it does not.More in the glossary and no IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary), the fleet (45: older ATR 72-500s with an uncertain future) and incidents (52: two landing-gear events since 2021 and a thin public record). The environment (55) matches the other Bangladeshi airlines.