In the past few weeks, the collapse of Flightexpert.com has dominated headlines and conversations. Thousands of people across the country have lost money and trust. Travel dreams were shattered. Family holidays turned into frustration. The company vanished, and what was once a known and trusted name has now become a cautionary tale. What followed was entirely predictable. Outrage on Facebook, shared posts, public statements.
But soon, as always, we moved on. We treated this event like a one-time scam. But the truth is, Flightexpert.com is not the disease. It is a symptom. A reflection of the environment we have allowed to grow, where trust is fragile, accountability is optional, and shortcuts are often more respected than the long road of integrity.
This is not just a story about a travel company. It is a story about us. About how we, as a society, respond to deception. About how we allow a culture of quick wins, loopholes, and “connection-based success” to thrive. It would be easier to isolate this event, blame a few individuals, and close the chapter. But that would be dishonest.
The reality is that this happened in an ecosystem we’ve all helped normalize. In Bangladesh, scams are no longer shocking. They are almost expected. We experience them in different sectors, in different forms, at different scales.
When someone becomes rich quickly, we admire them. We rarely ask how. When someone finds a way around the rules, we call them clever. We envy their “shortcut.” Honesty is not celebrated. It is tolerated, at best. Integrity is viewed as admirable only when it’s convenient.
In this culture, what matters is outcome, not process. And it’s not just about government institutions or businesses. The educated class, too, plays its part. Students are caught faking documents for foreign admissions. Migration facilitators charge large sums to help people move abroad through questionable channels. Professionals manipulate systems, not to disrupt them for good, but to profit quietly.
We talk about brain drain. But often, it is not just talent that is leaving. It is an entire set of learned behaviors, shaped by years of navigating broken systems, that gets exported along with the passport.
The Flightexpert incident is just the latest headline that brings this to the surface. It succeeded for as long as it did not because people were foolish, but because the broader system allowed it to flourish. Customers believed in them because we are constantly told to believe in appearances, in marketing, in curated reputations.
And when trust gets abused, there’s little recourse. The law is slow. The outrage is fast. Then silence. This is the environment many of us are used to now. An environment where trust has become a fragile currency, and exploitation is part of the business model.
But if we keep treating each scam as an isolated event, we will never ask the real questions. We will just wait for the next one. That is the cycle we are stuck in. And many have simply accepted it as the cost of living here.
We talk about political change every year. New leadership, new reforms, new hope. But what are we really changing? If you look closely, the playbook rarely shifts. It’s still about power, control, and survival. Not truth. Not justice. And certainly not a collective moral reset.
The players may change, but the game remains the same. The deeper problem is that we have allowed this mindset to spread across everything. It starts with small things. A little bribe to process a file faster. A phone call to skip a queue. A favour traded for a contract.
These aren’t just private decisions. They shape the collective expectation of how the country operates. When shortcuts become the norm, anyone trying to follow the rules starts to feel foolish or left behind.
We have to understand that this isn’t about one company or even one sector. It’s about a culture of convenience over character. A culture where people leave because staying feels hopeless. And when those people go abroad, they don’t always start fresh. They carry the same learned behaviors with them, replicating what they knew back home. That’s why simply sending people abroad doesn’t fix the root problem. It just relocates it.
So what do we do? We have to start by admitting that this didn’t happen out of nowhere. Flightexpert.com didn’t invent fraud. It thrived in an environment that rewards presentation over principle. It thrived in a country where people are too exhausted to question anymore.
It thrived because we keep focusing on the scammer instead of the soil that grows scams. We also need to ask if we are genuinely teaching our next generation that integrity matters. Are we creating a system where the honest have a chance to succeed, or are we preparing our youth to survive by gaming the rules?
These questions aren’t theoretical. They define what kind of future we are building. Change won’t come from a trending hashtag or a viral video. It won’t come from waiting for a new government or blaming another agency.
It will come from individual decisions, from how we choose to act when no one is watching, from what we teach our kids, and from what we allow in our boardrooms and classrooms. It comes when we say no to the shortcut, even if it’s easier. When we say yes to honesty, even when it feels slower.
Flightexpert.com is a mirror. It forces us to look at ourselves, not just as victims of a scam, but as contributors to a broken value system. The more we delay fixing that system, the more we risk normalizing a future where this becomes standard practice.
So the real question is no longer about Flightexpert. It is about us. Do we want to keep exporting our people, or do we finally want to fix the place they’re leaving behind? Do we want to remain stuck in the cycle of betrayal and amnesia, or are we ready to break it?
Are we brave enough to build a country where trust is earned, not marketed, and where integrity is the starting point, not the sacrifice? Because the mirror is not going away. The longer we look away, the clearer the reflection becomes.
Feature by Sujan Chowdhury
Founder & Principal Consultant, Chowdhury & Co.
