Sri Lanka Aviation

As you can see in the Winter 2012 Network info I posted below, SriLankan Airlines Route Network is very much improved as they are providing a daily nonstop flights to most of the destinations. Also frequency of flights have been increased on the profit making destinations. Only concern I have on UL is about the ageing A340-311s which are no-longer suitable to haul the long-range flights because of the poor quality of seats and old IFE in Economy Class. 4R-ALH inducted to the fleet in Dec 2011 also has no IFE in Economy Class and it has poor quality of seats so UL got to utilise 4R-ALH (MSN627 young A332 in UL fleet) for short and medium hauls. Therefore the cabins of 4R-ALH needs to be upgraded up to the standard to serve the long-hauls. Until the lease-end, ageing A340-311s could be used for only medium range flights. Since the pax-demand on long haul flights are low, UL is better purchase three A330-300s to serve China and Medium Hauls while long-range flights served by A330-200s and A343-313Xs.

So the A330s which have been refurbished have only got new business class? With the same small screens for economy as before?

4R-ADF is that the only A340 which was been fully upgraded both business and economy class?

Was 4R-ALH recently acquired?? Because it's economy class apparently has no inflight system. Not a good thing.

Replacing the A340s, UL should perhaps aquire 4 A330-200s on lease and purchase 2 A330-300s or 2 A350s? Of course this requires a lot of capital to be invested.

Makes no sense to buy planes. Leasing is a far more cost efficient option and does not tie up large amounts of capital. Very few airlines actually own their own aircraft. UL and the country can hardly afford to put up USD100m+ for airplanes, which will need to be debt funded anyway which would be very expensive.

Well you're right, but we can dream right?

I read on LBO that many institutions in Sri Lanka do not read or bother with world reviews and ranking systems; most don’t even know these things exist.

Our airports and airlines bigwigs don’t even care for such rankings, most having not been out of Sri Lanka for long and think the low standards in SL are “the best” (of course with them stealing others peoples money to enjoy extravagant lifestyles globe trotting this may change). Add to this the attitude of the people in SL where they do not want to improve or better things, they’ll just jump abroad and enjoy betterment rather than have a desire to transfer such to SL. Why else are motorways coming up 40 years late.

What UL and CMB needs is a sense of rivalry. What they need is to set a goal to out beat the likes of Emirates and Dubai. The attitude and thinking should be one of: “they are our competitors, we need to beat them and take the number one spot from them bulldozing them out of the way”.

At the moment, like all things in SL they just don’t mind “hanging in” while being pushed side to side “hoping” everything will work out. This is like the current Governments aim to make SL a hub for transhipment, aviation and education. These are good ideas. But they are doing nothing to fulfil these aspirations and vision. They make lots of noise regarding these goals then do nothing, expecting it to all fall from the sky or something.

In fact most Government bigwigs and honcho’s have done everything possible to drive people away and undermine these goals, not to mention their primary interest in pocketing money for themselves which is just UGLY.

If UL and CMB view Emirates and Dubai as “the enemy” and drill into themselves the goal to be number 1 we can get a world class airlines and airport and achieve hub status.

A good thing that has been done is focusing on the Far East. This is where the money and profits lie. China and Korea are BURSTING with wealth. We need to capture it. We need to keep increasing our presence and quality of service (the latter most important) to this sector. Lets also not forget Chinese love going to Europe and London in particular. This is a HUGE market area and provides the ability to give CMB true hub status as well.

There is also passenger traffic flowing in the reverse direction from West to East, especially with business types looking for their fortunes in the East.

However as CMB stands now as an airport, it’s not that great. They need to build that new terminal soon and make sure it can get IATA’s South Asia hub status conferred to it, before this is given to a South Indian airport.

UL and CMB considered EK and DXB their enemy, but for the wrong reasons.

EK transformed UL, what then amounted to a Nigerian tuk-tuk service to something that people can actually fly.

But then they declared war on EK and chased them away, at a time when EK’s might was absolutely crucial for the survival of UL. Rest, as they call is history!

UL today is surviving on handouts (tax payer money) with a begging bowl in its hands.

Don't get me wrong, I want UL to succeed and I am happy to see them taking a few good measures recently such as cutting down on 'pride routes' and increasing the frequency to profitable destinations. But they need to do more if they ever want to be in the black.

The real question is "do they want to"?

That’s way too much of an exaggeration.

UL was doing relatively well even in 1998, even making profit (we all know what happens to that extra $$$). Don’t forget the deal with Emirates was not one way, Emirates gained immensely and started stealing from SL, including pilots, staff, landing rights and much more. They did squat to help UL out after the 2001 attack, instead used that as an opportunity to take more of ULs business.

Emirates has been around since 1985, UL much longer and much more established. Emirates during its “turn around” in that period in the 2000s needed something to help them along and they used and abused UL.

Not to mention Emirates also gets massive cash injections courtesy of UAE’s oil wealth. Which is what helped Emirates jump start.

Everyone thinks the deal with Emirates was some kind of “perfect dream” which was a godsend to UL, but it was not. People should remember that.

The PROBLEM with UL, like many things in SL, is management. We HAVE good CAPABLE people in every field. Sadly they are crushed and driven away by donkeys who get appointed as their bosses to positions of authority which they never earned or deserved, only grabbing them by being a good bootlicker, friend or relative.

Oh well, SL pays a big price for being a demo-crazy.

Those who want to work hard and push themselves and better the country are brutally crushed by those that who are only interested in themselves.

Obviously, they do not. This is the thing in SL over all. People do not have a collective sense of betterment for everyone, it’s all “me me me, and how best can I further myself and my own happiness which I shall do no matter how many people I need to crush in the process”. Not to mention how they like to drag down others who do better than them. I’ve seen this so many times in Sri Lanka. When someone is doing brilliantly an idiot who is not as good gets jealous and does their best to undermine this person to cover up for his/her own inadequacies, rather than improve themselves.

Remember all the protests by three wheel drivers against the nano cabs when they started? I heard one drive blasting the Nano cab service saying “they are offering a better service than us for the same price…this is not fair, we’ll lose our business”. Toss in demo-crazy with a political idiot hunting for votes, and you know why the country stagnates.

This is actually not true. Emirates has been run as a commericial operation since its inception in 1985 and has made a profit every year.

Currently they dont get ANY subsidies from the Dubai government. The only thing they probably get is infrastructure in the the form of Terminal 3 and a monopoly. EK's ultimate owner is one of my companies clients so I see their accounts (which are public) and have analysed their credit strengths and competitive positioning so I know this to be true.

UL has the exact same but is ridiculous compare to EK.

Dont get me wrong, I am not sayin UL needs to be like EK. Just better than it is now and money making. There is huge potential to emulate the hub and spoke model employed by EK, EY etc given our location but we dont seem to be able to do it.

I heard QA is lining up a partnership with EK routing all QA Europe bound traffic through Dubai. We could easily do something like that. But no, we are so short sighted its painful

Just to add, Emirates is owned by Dubai, not the UAE, therefore it has no oil wealth support. That is funneled into EY which is owned by Abu Dhabi. Incidently EY has still not made a profit even though its been in operation since 2006?

Emirates was essentially unknown till the 2000s.

From what i gathered Emirates got cash injections to get it off the ground and then thanks to proper managment and vision (espically around the very late 90s and early 2000s) they are now going sky high.

No way am i comparing this to UL, where cash injections for UL is basically sticking money in a black hole.

Emirates is run properly with goals in mind and a proper business model which is raking in the profits.

Whats lacking is long term vision and a long term goal to be THE BEST. They need to set a goal to climb high like Emirates. UL needs to aim big to become big.

We don't need to have 100s of aircraft and hundreds of destinations right away, as you say. But UL and various bigwigs in SL need to think out of the box and rid themselves of "small island mentality". They should think, "lets make UL like emirates", "lets dominate the skies".

But whats happened? Idiots in charge playing hell, pocketing money for themselves, letting their buddies do what they want, and treating the airline like some Lego toy.

This is the problem in SL overall. No one has proper vision, they have “island syndrome”. Just because we are a small island it doesn’t mean we should just wait like this, we can be so much MORE and should aim for that, we can become one of the “big boys”. I hate this "we're a small country, we should know our place as nobodies in the world" attitude prevalent within SL.

But but but we need to "preserve the national carrier". So lets limit how many other airlines fly to SL and the frequencies they are allowed to operater to thus let CMB be a small airport forever that never grows. Because guaranteeing UL it's monopoly is more important...

Actually EY made a profit last year, their very first since inception.



I totally and completely agree that EK does not get any government money, instead they pay royalties to the coffers of the Dubai government, who are somewhat cash strapped.

1. When UL was under EK management, there was an agreement in place not to cross recruit. This was actually somewhat detrimental to UL staff at the time, because they never got any opportunity with EK.

However, as soon as EK was kicked out, they went on a recruiting spree taking the cream de la crème of cabin crew and pilots. Peter Hill then accompanied some of the best operational people to EK and then the rest of the good people to Oman Air when he became the CEO there. So, in summary, NO, EK did not poach UL staff (cockpit crew or otherwise) during the time of their managing UL.

2. Except for ZHR, EK never used UL landing rights to fly any route that UL WANTED to fly. Sure, they used UL flight numbers on their second JFK flight and perhaps some other destinations that UL never wanted or did not have in their business plan to fly, but not to the detriment of UL.

3. EK never abandoned UL during the 2001 attack. It is widely believed in the aviation circles that might of the EK is what actually saved UL when half their fleet went up in smoke (that and the fantastic work by the UL staff). In the light of loss of the long haul metal (A343s and A332s) EK asked UL to fly CMB-DXB-CMB shuttle service with their remaining A320 and wide bodies and they picked up the passengers that were headed to Europe and put them in their flights from DXB, thereby allowing UL not to cancel the tickets and pay refund + penalties. I am sure EK must have charged UL for the sectors they undertook, but I am not privy to the details of that arrangement.

4. I think the "free money and free fuel for EK" fallacy has been firmly put to death in here and elsewhere, so I am not even going there.

MJ is finally promoting Bahrain as as a destination.



Mihin Lanka starting 02SEP12 plans to launch 5 weekly Colombo – Bahrain service, on board mono-class Airbus A321 aircraft. This is to replace SriLankan Airlines’ service after the airline to withdraw from this route after over 40 years of operation.

Reservation for this flight is now available on www.mihinlanka.com, Schedule:

MJ411 CMB1830 – 2135BAH 321 x56
MJ412 BAH2235 – 0605+1CMB 321 x56