Nope, it’s not for the new route. It’s for its 12 year maintenance, repair and overhaul check. Also known as the D-Check. S2-AFO and S2-AFP will be turning 12 years old by the end of this year and therefore they must get their D-Checks done to keep their air worthiness certificates. But, Biman does not have the facilities to perform D-Checks in their own hangar which is why it was sent to Rome, via Jeddah to carry out the checks there. Biman can do C-Checks in their own hangars though.
Rumor has it that the authority is going to conduct another study on a dependent runway. A similar, if not the same, study had been conducted back in 2015 by a South Korean firm. Talk about wasting money😂😂