I remember AirArabia was made a big proposal to make a hub in Mattala to reach Far East Destinations. Sadly Gov declined to approve the request from AirArabia.

Anyway, Cinnamon Air to begin Daily flights between Colombo and Mattala onboard Cessna effec May 2016. FlyDubai likely to cancel Mattala end of this Dec but RotanaJet may continue flying three weekly - AUH-CMB-HRI route.

Does this mean Sri Lanka Gov is not going to get anymore aircraft for Mihin ? If yes that's good ! may be Gov is planning to close Mihin once the lease agreements have been expired for current fleet of Mihin.

Suppose Mihin close the business - SL gov should allow Fitsair to launch regional destinations (IXM etc..) from Colombo. Other Destinations like Jakarta, Seychelles, Kolkota etc.. should be served by SriLankan onboard high density A321s.

Frequency of flights by Mihin (effec Dec 15)

Three weekly = Kolkota, Seychelles, Male'
Four weekly = Lahore
Five weekly = Muscat, Bahrain, Chennai
Daily = Jakarta, Madurai
Ten weekly = Dhaka

Current Fleet - A319 X 1 , A320 X 1 , A321 X 2

Mihin Lanka to increase Dhaka flights from daily to 10 weekly effec 15 Dec 2015.

07:25 - 11:05 = 14:30 - 17:30 - CMB-DAC-CMB - MJ501/2 - DAILY
21:20 - 01:00 = 02:00 - 05:00 - CMB-DAC-CMB - MJ507/8 - 126 + 1 (effec 15 Dec)

According to The Sunday Leader, UL to cancel the flights to CDG, FRA, FCO and expand more flights to China and India from the next season. Also UL has scrapped the plan of resuming flights to Melbourne. Dias also said that MJ would be integrated into UL. Do you think this is a good move?

I dont thinnk we will get slots again for CDG & FRA if we cancel flights.

Can a Slot be rented out for another Airline?

I believe the move by the SriLankan Chairman is sensible. It needs change of directions and real change. The change obviously will not be comforting. But it is the only way out for the Airline's survival. It is no longer possible to compete with ME3 on European destinations. European operation is costly and only way it could sustain for SriLankan is having the full front cabin occupation on all sectors on all flights. That was not the case with SriLankan for long time effectively due to two main reasons.

1. During EK management days , Emirates strategically changed the Reservations system to theirs and secured the discrete data from SriLankan frequent flyers. Then they effectively changed frequent flyers program to their system, Skywards and assigned EK numbers for all the existing SriLankan Airlines frequent flyers. No SriLankan senior manager ever protested and no one could see the long term repercussions at that time. By this action EK absorbed thousands of SriLankan Airlines Frequent Flyers (mostly front cabin flyers) to EK Frequent Flyer Program without any effort. As a result SriLankan Frequent flyers became custom to EK program and at the same time for these members EK extended value additions so they eventually became theirs.

2. When EK left SriLankan Airlines they influenced some SriLankan Senior Managers to have a new program for frequent flyers. SriLankan never realized by then they had zero frequent flyers in their kitty. So a new program was introduced. Stupidity continued as SriLankan took ages to introduce a proper program. The one that was introduced late had name changes again. The few patriotic SriLankan travelers who wanted to come back to SriLankan Frequent flyer program was disappointed. EK effectively offered extra benefits and value additions to their clients when SriLankan reintroduced their frequent flyer program to retain even an odd SriLankan planning to change to the new one at SriLankan Airlines. It was too little too late for SriLankan as always.

It is sad to note that often SriLankan Senior Managers do not understand a value of a frequent flyer. They talk big about product enhancements route expansions etc etc. None of them could foresee the serious threat that EK made when they decided to enroll SriLankan frequent flyers to theirs.

TODAY SRILANKAN AIRLINES IS WITHDRAWING FROM EUROPE AS A RESULT OF EK ACTIONS 10 YEARS A GO.

GUYS' AT LEAST LEARN NOW WHAT GUERRILLA MARKETING IS?

Totally disagree. this decision we have thanks to MR"s Family management and nothing to with EK.

Nothing to do with EK..............

SriLankan Airlines net losses up by 24 percent in 2014

SriLankan Airlines net losses increased by 24 percent in 2014 amounting to Rs. 32.4 billion, data in the 2013/2014 annual report submitted to parliament showed. The carrier incurred a loss of Rs. 26.1 billion in 2013.

I agree with the above bit.

When UL started their first frequent flyer program after separating from Skywards, I was one of the first to join. My membership number was 17, if I remember correctly.

As I was flying back to CMB every month, I saw value in it.

Since I was Gold in Skywards at the time (there was no platinum tier then) I requested UL to match my status. Matching status is very common in the industry, even today, and with UL it made a lot more sense as up until that time UL was part of Skywards and I enjoyed status on UL flights.

UL sent me a very arrogant response saying that I have to "earn" my status and it is not "handed down".

This was the secondary reason for my abandoning UL back then and I have never looked back since.

And I am pretty sure the decision was influenced by this


The board of directors at loss-making SriLankan Airlines has been told to ‘perform or quit’ if the airline doesn’t return to profitability soon. Not mincing his words, Public Enterprises Development Deputy Minister Eran Wickramaratne warned this week that the national carrier should get its act together and stop the bleeding (losses) within two years and then show a growth path.

“I will not accept a budget which shows five years of continuous losses. Those who are managing the company and who are on the boards of the company need to take responsibility (or leave),” he told a pre-budget panel discussion organised by the Sunday Times Business Club (STBC) on Monday at the Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel. The airline comes under the purview of Mr. Wickramaratne’s ministry.



They have been asked (Or ordered/demanded) to make the UL profitable by two years or leave and if you read the rest of article its obvious GoSL is not willing to pump more money into the UL specially when they are having to pay a lot of loans soon. So they have no options left

I am not sure what you have been smoking...but seems good.
First you need to have good product and service otherwise you cannot compete with ME3 or any Asian Airlines

#1 Loyalty program is secondary to primary product. Product should be good otherwise there is no use of a loyalty program.Only thing correct in #1 is Skyward is a much better loyalty program and EK is a far superior product.

#2 UL left Skywards on its own will. EK was upset and EK retaliated with removing UL codeshare on EK flights.

& Finally you can thank MR for the fiasco

I am not sure what you said there, but I totally agree with you

Many members expressed their disagreement to my analysis. I respect all their views and disagreements.

I am no MR fan and never will be.

Undoubtedly MR is the main contributor for the colossal loss UL is making now.

But my analysis is to explain the sequence of events that made UL to specifically close the European network

ME3 carriers had a strategic approach to go away from the typical labour traffic from Colombo and absorb business travellers, long haul traffic and front cabin traffic over the last 5 years. I know they reached their ambitious targets on CMB. In the meantime UL continue to claim they have 80+% load factor in their flights. If the scale of economics were done properly how did European sectors made such a loss with that number of Load Factor?

I propose members to rethink my argument....did they really lose their Frequent flyers of Europe & North America to ME3 carriers or not? I know they lost, and what number of them were premium travelers? Did UL gain back those lost to their current frequent flyer program?

Of course we can blame MR for UL losses but you cannot blame him for losing traffic to Europe which was rightfully UL’s?

Hi Rahal, Do you know when 4R-ALP going to fly the first revenue flight for UL? Which is the first destination? Do they have plans to expand the route network with a new addition of the fifth A333? Any update on retiring 4R-ALG & 4R-ADF?

4r-alp doing today ul503/4 to lhr

Hello
As you may already know it is now flying to heathrow under UL503
I don't think they will expans the network because there is no addition to the fleet in fact as another aircraft is about to e taken away from the service. ALG lease return check is
Scheduled to be started by 15th of December... ADF was in hangar for a couple of weeks and now she is about to rejoin the fleet and will fly until late January as far as I kmow ( or probably until ALG is finished) ...
Cheers