^^^Oh No...Another dead weight

It was an open secret at UL that Manoj was enjoying a life of luxury in London paid for with public funds. His "duties" included coming to the office in Hounslow to read the newspapers.

Just another one of the former President's loyal cronies!

Hopefully he is one of the people being investigated for abuse of power. The staff in London all knew what was going on.

These people need to be investigated, charged and imprisoned! Time for some accountability!

4R-MRF

Thanks for the pic of 4R-MRF, I just checked on FR24 this A319 (MSN 1893) was delivered to Colombo from Chengdu on the 11-03-2015. It's the first ever A319 to join the Sri Lanka Aviation if i am not mistaken. Do you know the seat config? Is it addition to the fleet or replacement?

Daily 787 Dreamliner service to Colombo from July 1st onwards. Source Airlineroute.net.



QATAR Airways from 01JUL15 plans to being Boeing 787-8 operations on Doha – Colombo route, on 1 of 3 daily flights. The Dreamliner is scheduled to operate QR664/665 service.
QR664 DOH0055 – 0800CMB 788 D
QR665 CMB0930 – 1125DOH 788 D

Hopefully Mihin Lanka will announce more flights and new destination with this additional aircraft (4R-MRF) which has seat config of 16J and 96Y. I think it has SriLankan's type of seats.

Below pictures were shared by someone works at CMB.

Mihin increases CMB-IXM frequency from 5x weekly to daily from middle of June.

Great news! LOT polish also bring B788 to Colombo but that's during the winter season. Currently QR operates two daily A333s and one daily B777-300s. But from 1st July, QR will be operating Colombo with two daily B777-300 and one daily B788. It's not a good news middle eastern carriers are dumping more seats here at Colombo i.e. Since last few months SV, KU, WY, EY, EK, TK, QR have increased the freq/capacity on the Colombo route. In return SriLankan is reducing the capacity to Europe and to some gulf destinations i.e. DXB, DMM, MCT, BAH (MJ), SHJ (MJ). I doubt any european carriers will re enter the Colombo route. Recenty SriLankan told that their target market is India, China and far east.

This is a very interesting article, published today in The Economist. Seems the original "Mattala" model.



Infrastructure
Aerotropolitan ambitions

China’s frenzied building of airports includes work on city-sized projects
Mar 14th 2015 | ZHENGZHOU | From the print edition
Timekeeper

POLITICIANS in London who have been debating for years over whether to approve the building of a third runway at Heathrow Airport might find a visit to Zhengzhou—an inland provincial capital little known outside China—an eye-opening experience. Some 20,000 workers are labouring around the clock to build a second terminal and runway for the city’s airport. They are due to begin test operations by December, just three years after ground was broken. By 2030, officials expect, the two terminals and, by then, five runways will handle 70m passengers yearly—about the same as Heathrow now—and 5m tonnes of cargo, more than three times as much as Heathrow last year.

But the ambitions of Zhengzhou airport (pictured) are far bigger than these numbers suggest. It aspires to be the centre of an “aerotropolis”, a city nearly seven times the size of Manhattan with the airport not a noisy intrusion on its edge but built into its very heart. Its perimeter will encompass logistics facilities, R&D centres, exhibition halls and factories that will link central China to the rest of the global economy. It will include homes and amenities for 2.6m people by 2025, about half as many as live in Zhengzhou’s main urban area today. Heathrow struggles to expand because of Londoners’ qualms, but China’s urban planners are not bothered by grumbling; big building projects rarely involve much consulting of the public.

The idea of airport-centred cities is not a Chinese one. John Kasarda of the University of North Carolina helped to promote it in a book he co-wrote, “Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next”, which was published in 2011. He is an adviser to Zhengzhou Airport Economic Zone (ZAEZ), as the aerotropolis is called. China, however, is well-placed to turn Mr Kasarda’s etymological mishmash into reality. The Chinese see airports as “competitive assets”, he says, not “nuisances and environmental threats”—although many cities, inspired by another American-invented term, insist they want to turn themselves into green “eco-cities”. New urban centres are being built on greenfield sites across the country. Some are being developed in such disregard of demand that they are becoming eerily empty “ghost towns”. But they are giving planners ample opportunity to build airports alongside new cities, instead of as afterthoughts.

Construction of airports is proceeding at a blistering pace. The government’s plan for 2011-15 called for 82 new airports to be built during this period. In the event, more than 100 have sprung up. Officials are fond of what they call “airport economics”, by which they mean the use of airport-building to boost local economies.

Only in a handful of cases do overseers of these projects explicitly say that they want to build aerotropolises. One example is in the southern outskirts of Beijing, centred on a village called Nangezhuang, where a groundbreaking ceremony was held on December 26th. Little activity is visible: a few pieces of construction equipment sat idle one recent afternoon at the edge of a sorghum field as herders walked their sheep along a nearby dirt road. But by 2019 the area is due to be turned into one of the world’s largest airports, at a cost of 80 billion yuan ($13 billion). As much as 80 billion yuan more will reportedly be spent turning the surrounding area into an economic and industrial hub.

Some wonder whether all this is necessary. Wang Tao of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy, a think-tank in Beijing, calls the airport-construction frenzy “misguided”. He believes many of the cities building big airports do not need them, thanks to a rapid expansion of the country’s high-speed rail network in recent years (see map). Local officials, Mr Wang says, are after political prestige and a quick boost to local GDP; they are happy to leave their successors to grapple with the debts. Many new airports operate at a loss. Mr Kasarda, however, defends the Zhengzhou project. It is misguided, he says, to assess an airport’s value solely by its operational profitability; its role as an economic driver also needs to be taken into account. “We are putting the aerotropolis theory into practice,” says Zhang Yanming, ZAEZ’s Communist Party chief.

Zhengzhou has a long history as a trading and transport hub, well-connected to China’s largest population centres. It also has an abundant supply of labour (it is the capital of Henan province, one of China’s most populous, with more than 100m people). The ZAEZ allows duty-free import and re-export of goods and components. Mr Zhang says this has attracted more than a dozen makers of mobile phones, including Foxconn, a Taiwanese-owned firm best known for producing Apple iPhones. The Foxconn factory employs 200,000 people year-round, and 300,000 at times of peak production. Three-quarters of the iPhones made globally in the past three years came from ZAEZ, Mr Zhang says. Such small, high value-added, products benefit greatly from ready access to airports.

Beijing’s aerotropolis also has built-in advantages, not least strong support from the central government. Mr Kasarda acknowledges that his concept cannot work everywhere, especially in many of China’s smaller cities. But he remains excited by the many suitable candidates in a country that is willing—and more able than most— to give it a try. “They can really design not just an airport, but an aerotropolis from scratch,” he enthuses. It remains to be seen how enthusiastic residents will be about the jets roaring over them.

From the print edition: China

This documentary explains the price of China's 'development'. It's called "Under the Dome"

It is now banned in China....



I've only watched part of it but it looks like it's worth 1:45 of your time.

Is 4R-ALC getting economy class retrofit? I don't see it flying for sometime. And is 4R-ALG getting cabin fittings?

SriLankan Airlines needs US$125mn before end March: PM

COLOMBO (EconomyNext) - State-run SriLankan Airlines, which ran into heavy sustained losses after its managing partner Emirates was removed by the Rajapaksa regime, needs 125 million US dollars by end March to settle fuel bills and loans, Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe said.

Wickramasinghe told parliament since 2011 August, the airline had received 375 million US dollars on top of a 520 million US dollar equity injection over 5 years.

The airline now needed another 125 million US dollars (16.6 billion rupees) by March 31 to pay Ceylon Petroleum Corporation and repay loans to the Bank of Ceylon.

Wickramasinghe said he was to meet Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake on the matter Tuesday.

In addition to capital injection made through injections of Treasury bonds, SriLankan had floated syndicated loans and bonds abroad with Treasury guarantees.

SriLankan Airlines has suffered 110 billion rupees of losses since Emirates was ousted by the Rajapaksa regime as its managing equity partner.

According to reports former minister Sajin Vass Gunewardene played a role in the ouster. Vass Gunewardene then set up Mihin Air with people's money, which also started to make losses.

http://www.economynext.com/SriLankan_Airlines_needs_US$125mn_before_end_March __PM-3-1310-6.html

I notice 4R-ALC is not flying for few weeks. Any idea if it's in the C-Check or Cabin-upgrade?

I doubt SriLankan will be upgrading 4R-ALG and other two of the A332s as they are going to be replaced by the A359s next year.

Has anybody know the rego of A332s have got the new cabin in both J & Y class? I know 4R-ALD has got lovely cabin : http://cruisinaltitude.cruisinaltitu...iddleSeats.jpg

Mihin Lanka's 4R-MRF first revenue flight operating today to Sharjah as MJ407.

What happened 4R-MRD? Not active for more than a week now.

I heard 4R-MRD at the C-check and it's coming back to service within two weeks time.

There are rumours, Airbus is in the process of removing the VIP kit from the brand new Airbus A333/4R-ALN which is going to be ferried to Colombo by the end of March 2015.