Four international ground handlers — Menzies Aviation, Swissport, Çelebi Aviation Holding and dnata — have been submitted for regulatory clearance to run passenger ground handling at the new Third Terminal of Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka.

The Japanese consortium preparing to operate the terminal put the four names forward, Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha reported. The Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) will now screen each company for security, regulatory or other concerns before the consortium picks one eligible operator.

The winner becomes the terminal's second passenger ground handling provider, operating alongside Biman Bangladesh Airlines, which has held the field alone at the country's principal international airport.

What does a second handler change?

The stated aim is competition. Bangladesh's government expects a rival operator to lift ground handling performance across the metrics that airlines actually bill for:

• aircraft turnaround times
• baggage delivery
• equipment availability
• safety
• passenger service

For carriers, that translates into schedule resilience and shorter block-time penalties at a hub that has long depended on a single state-affiliated handler. The selection also marks a concrete step toward full-scale operations at the Third Terminal, which remains the country's largest aviation capacity expansion.

Who has put numbers on the table?

Only one bidder has published its price of entry. Menzies says it would invest more than $12 million in its first year of operations if selected — roughly the cost of a fully equipped narrowbody turnaround operation, spread across ground support equipment, technology and workforce training.

The company has also proposed creating more than 1,000 direct jobs and establishing a training academy in Dhaka. That is a direct answer to the labor-depth question that has constrained ground handling quality in the market; a trained local workforce, not imported supervisors, is what sustains turnaround performance.

Swissport, Çelebi and dnata have disclosed no comparable commitments publicly. All three operate at scale across South and Southeast Asia, so none arrives as an unknown quantity to CAAB's reviewers.

What happens next?

CAAB clearance comes first. The Japanese consortium then selects from the eligible list. No final selection has been announced, and no date for the decision has been made public.

Until a handler is named and staffed, the terminal's promised capacity gains remain on paper. The bidders' competing records on dispatch reliability and baggage performance will tell CAAB and the consortium more than any pitch deck.