Sri Lanka Aviation

It's a second acceptance flight. Most probably 4R-ALP will be ferried to CMB after completing it's third acceptance flight.

Currently UL is operating domestic flights with a joint venture with Cinnamon Air who have the ambhibians with capacity of 8 seats. It seems to be UL is thinking connect especially KKS & TRR with this 40 seater. Do you know what type of aircraft they are planning acquire? Will it fly directly from CMB? Helitours have two MA60s but current operation is 3 weekly on RML-TRR-KKS. What a waste!

These 8 new aircraft definately includes 4 X A321 NEOS and 3 X A359s but notsure which is the 8th aircraft. 4 X A321 NEOS are coming to replace 4R-ABK, 4R-ABL, 4R-ABQ & 4R-ABR. 3 X A359s are replacing 4R-ALH, 4R-ALJ & ??? . But they delayed the A359 delivery from Jul 2016 to 2017 I think.

Guangzhou already been confirmed to increase from 4 to daily and London from daily to 9 weekly. UL is better restructure the network & focus on profitable destinations.

Hope UL brings in either a couple of ATR42-600's or preferably the Bombardier Dash8 Q-200's which would be ideal for domestic service.
I do agree with the wastage of resources by Helitours as they operate only on Monday Wednesdays and Fridays
Getting a seat is pretty tough due to all the flights been booked well in advance.They should really think on increasing their frequency as the demand is very high and the fares being quite affordable.

It will be better if SriLankan can codeshare with Helitours and they should launch daily services on CMB-TRR-JAF route.

Is the UL and Mihin going to be placed under a State Holding Corporation too

The PM says all SOEs will be placed under a Temasek Holdings still holdings coperation while non-strategic enterprises will be privatized

State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) Reform

A State Holding Corporation Limited (SHCL) to be formed, under which all state owned entrepreneurial enterprises would be under, built along the lines of Temasek Holdings of Singapore, to successfully manage state enterprises
Efficient managers to be employed to run the SOEs and corrupt employees / politicians involved to be dealt accordingly

SriLankan Airlines operates a new A330-300 fleet with the arrival of its fifth Airbus on 10 November 2015







Last trial flight 4R-ALP on 5-Nov-2015

Source: Jacquies Panas.

I recently read from an interview which gives a bit more insight on route development of SriLankan. From mid 2016, UL is planning to increase flights to Beijing from 4 to daily, Tokyo from 4 to 5 weekly and increase the frequency to Indian cities. Schedules for Melbourne was loaded early this year with resumption date of 2 Nov 15 but it's now been postponed to end of 2016. Again UL is studying possibilities to resume Johannesburg for the future.

Also, according to that Press release, UL is getting 8x A350s with deliveries starting in 2016. I thought they had only ordered 7 A350s (4 + 3 leased aircraft)?

It would be best if UL focuses on long haul flights and tourist destinations while MJ is given the routes where working class density is high....

will believe MEL when we see it. MEL airport is very congested now and all lucrative slots are gone. CMB-MEL-CMB success will be based not only on end to end but connector traffic to Europe and India and UL ability to promote CMB as a stop over destination. Yield are thin AI is struggling on DEL-MEL/SYD flights. In the case of JNB a surprising move, South African Economy is a mess and RAND is faring baldy in the world financial forum. South African and Jet has discountinued flights from JNB to Indian Sub Continent from 2013 and 2014. Hope UL has done a proper feasibility. Then again there is a lot of China Africa traffic. UL has to plan schedules so they are seamless to China and SA. Air China has entered JNB market, SA already flies to Mainland China and HKG, UL has to offer something that CA and SA does not offer. One move if SA is to move into Asia and JNB market is, there is no ONEWORLD carrier between JNB and Asia except CX. Whereas for STAR ALLIANCE there is SA, CA and SQ. If UL and use CMB that would be good. Also fyi, MH used to fly KUL-JNB-CPT-EZE (Asia to South Ameria via South Africa using a B747-400 this flight no longer operates and TG has pulled out from JNB-BKK route from a few months ago.)

Any idea why UL flights to both KUL and SIN (all their flights in a day to both destinations) today are either delayed by 4 hrs or is cancelled.

Hi Rahal, I can see UL flights have to been delayed today and could notice UL is running with short active-fleet of 19 aircraft (A32Series - 8 & A33Series - 11) after last A343 taken out of the service last week. Does this mean 4R-ADF had been sent to hangar for end-of-lease-checks? Any idea whether it will be coming back in service until 6Jan as reported before. Very sad to see my favourite A343 no longer part of UL fleet. It's said to be 5th A333 to be ferried from TLS to CMB tomorrow. So the delays are going to occur until 4R-ALP put in to service.

Sounds like more talk to me. Used to hear the same from Kapila. I've been hearing "soon" "next year" and "this Winter" for almost 10 years regarding flights to Australia. I have hard time taking this seriously.

The reality is they are out of money and the GOSL has no money to put into the Airline.

It's all in the last Annual Report - UL was supposed to get $125 Million from the GOSL. They didn't get this money.

Also in the Annual report - future liabilities associated with the order of new aircraft.

I'm not sure how they are continuing to fund operations.

Not sure where the money is going to come from to pay for the costs associated with the re-fleeting.

Better choice is our nation's third big airliner "Fitsair". As we already aware UL is already getting the customer orders on behalf of Fitssir for freighter service to international airports. So UL has to develop the joint venture with Fitsair on launching the domestic flights out of CMB to faciliate pax from abroad to take transit easily to other key domestic destinations like Kandy, Jaffna, Trimcomalee, Batticaloa, Anuradapura etc.. I'm sure lots of Sri Lankan disappora would love this if it's been matterialised. In the next stage Fitsair should launch flights onboard turboprop from RML to regional points like Male', Bengaluru, Trivandrum.

hello..

ADF has taken out of the fleet temporary for a special check, basically to identify and note the key areas for the upcoming lease return maintenance. far as I know it was scheduled for a week, and will be back into the business within next 2-3 days if they don't have any serious maintenance going on. since the busy seasonal schedule is coming, this is the last chance they have to take it out of the service temporary. ALG will be the first to pull out, probably by the mid december.
sorry mate, I didn't go to work in few days so not quite sure whether they have many aircrafts in the hangar and as a result they are operating with a short of aircrafts.

4R-ALL to Singapore.