Sri Lanka Airports

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said that international flights are expected to resume operations at Mattala from the end of this year.

The Cabinet of ministers had recently approved a proposal presented by Acting Transport and Civil Aviation Minister Ashoka Abeysinghe, to award the procurement of construction and maintenance of a hotel in a land owned by Airport and Aviation Services (Sri Lanka) Ltd., to Thilanka Hotel Pvt. Ltd. and Striders Corporation as recommended by the Cabinet-appointed Standing Procurement Committee, the latest cabinet decisions outlines.

Ratmalana Airport to undergo expansion

The Ratmalana Airport is poised to undergo expansion, said Minister of Aviation Nimal Siripala de Silva addressing an event held in Colombo recently.

The minister said he managed to get about 25 acres of land in the Ratmalana airport released by paying Rs725 million to the air force to relocate their hangers elseware. But this will not fully solve the problem to help the private entrepreneurs who want to come into the Ratmalana Airport to commence aviation related businesses, as there was a huge demand, he said.

“We need to expand the Ratmalana Airport. We are spending about Rs one billion in installing the latest navigation equipment,” he said.


The Batticaloa airport has now been converted to a fully fledged civilian airport and Hingurakgoda, Palali and many other airports are in the process of being transformed into civil airports, he said. Since the country have come into a new era of development and in view of the large tourist influx particularly high end, and the inflow of investors, the aviation industry needs to flourish. And particularly since the era of air restriction is over the people must also reap the benefit of peace that has dawned in the country.

Therefore internal flight services, air transportation and flying schools are areas, that must undergo rapid development, he said.

Source-http://www.dailynews.lk/2018/06/29/b...ergo-expansion

Good move ! but Presently , cargo aircraft and business jets are using apron D for parking. So what does the airport authority going to do for that?

Already CMB is terribly busy for aircraft parking during the peak hours.



© Busologist

Further, the Government has also decided to setup a dedicated domestic terminal in the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) for common use. Further, as there is no hangar space in BIA to allocate separate spaces for each operator, a common hangar space will be constructed for maintenance work and a separate hangar space for each operator in the Ratmalana Domestic Airport for night parking of aircrafts.*

The Cabinet also gave approval to allocate a portion of the current Apron D of BIA as a designated domestic apron to be utilised by all domestic flights. Further, self-handling by private operators will be permitted in domestic airports with BIA ground-handling and cargo charges set to undergo a downward revision for domestic carriers in consultation with SriLankan Airlines.*

My former boss - flew with him a few times as well.

I always found him to be a fair and honest man - very approachable.

Of course Sri Lankans just had to tear him down as he was seen as too 'pro Expat'.

He was replaced with Druvi Perera - we've seen how that worked out!

Veteran captain Milinda Ratnayake appointed Vice Chairman of Airport Authority

Clocking over 15,000 hours of flying passenger aircrafts, he has witnessed the operations of Air Ceylon, Air Lanka and SriLankan Airlines for over 40 years.

Besides his flying career, he also possesses a wealth of managerial experience overlooking Flight Operations and Service Delivery (managing security, cabin crew and ground handling).

He is the only Sri Lankan to be a representative of the Flight Operations Group with IATA. He is also an avid golfer. Capt. Ratnayake said he looked forward to bringing positive changes and improvements to the national airport.

Source-ft.lk

renovation work expected to commence shortly at the emigration counter areas at the departure terminal of the airport

Yahh i also share same view... the location itself does not demand for an international air port and if you take size our country alone, we don't need a bigger 2nd airport like Mattala ( i guess if you made Palali in to Int level.. that will have better proposition than Mattala as far as SL air ports are concerned) .. all our efforts should be focused on how to improve BIA, Katunayake and cater to both SL and Male.. look at Bali Air port for an instances... that has pretty much air traffic than us... (anytime in bound and out bound flights to CMB is just 10-30.. but Bali for that instances 60-70.)
PHOTO-1 CMB

PHOTO-2 BALI (DPS)

do we have so much of air traffic influx..? no.... so What Mattala can do about it...? make it transit hub.. ok then who will fly using this airport as a hub... look at our location (we are at edge of Indian ocean... as against SIN, MALAYSIA, HKG, MUMBAI, DUBAI for that matter

Only probable country to fly out is just India....so is there is a real opportunity make Mattala as a transit hub.. well i'm doubtful...apart from that now every air liner are eyeing on direct flights... so fate of those transit hubs are at a stake and only very few will remain....

No it doesn't!

There was no economic case for this airport - a vanity project by the former President.

Plenty of corruption too if anyone ever bothers to investigate.

The fact that no Airline flies here shows what a horrendous waste of money this is - it will never be a viable airport.

Hopefully the IMF forces the GOSL to shut this down - the quicker the better imho.

Effective from Monday 18th June 2018, a series of renovation work expected to commence shortly at the emigration counter areas at the departure terminal of the BIA.

Source-Srilankan airlines

Now the govt must pay both the debt and spend money to maintain this. If the govt doesn't find a good solution to the issue then the burden falls entirely on the tax payers

Probably why it’s called a Ghost Airport... Now let’s see if the Indians want to manage HRI or will the Chinese beat them to it

Never been to HRI, but by the looks of it and it’s interior, it seems to be much better than CMB which is one of the worst airports I’ve ever been to

HRI does have immense potential, and it needs to be managed by a proper institution and work to attract more airlines to it as well as provide domestic air connectivity at economical prices to CMB and RML which would be an absolute necessity

that's correct

I was really surprised that it lasted that long