Er, um, they can afford it because they accept circuitous routings that take a week to reach the destination.
Cheap fares are available in Asian bucket shops with truly heinous routings. If you don’t mind a lot of time in airports, shuttles, layovers and inconvenient connections you can save some real money.
I don’t recommend it, but it is possible to do.
Possibly cheapo airlines that don’t fly every day?
I wonder how much one spends on room and board?
My guess is that most such people stay at their family homes.
I meant during the delays between flights during the “week” before they get to the family home. Perhaps there are countrymen along the way who put them up.
That’s assuming anyone actually does spend a week getting to Bangladesh. I think you really have to work at it to take that long to get there. And that also means less time for the visit.
No doubt you can reduce the price considerably in exchange for a quite heinous schedule. Flights on cheap airlines and routes, and with that, awful layovers.
In a previous life I once flew for work with a company that was very strapped for money. It took 40 hours to fly from Bahrain to home in Australia. We came home via Japan and a cheap tourist focused carrier that stopped incessantly down the east coast of Oz. There was no hotel time. We just paced around the airports during long layovers and got home totally wrecked.
It makes a huge difference when the flights are properly organised with sensible connections. Chopping and changing carriers in search of the cheapest can mean as much time waiting for connections as flying.
Even then, we took less than 2 days. Very hard to make even the worst schedule take much longer.
My first thought that is is an excuse to spend three weeks minus travel time rather than one week with an ill relative. He did mention that he was taking less expensive flights.