Sri Lankan Airlines needs to start a new phase of its long restructuring process with the investments from Foreign & Sri Lankan investors and Sri Lankan government only needs to maintain a minority stake in the airline as it will help to increase the investor confidence, as in the past, government must not interfere with UL Management.

It will be better in the future if UL management can get below stake holders…….

49% - Qatar Airways
30% - Aitken Spence
21% - Sri Lankan Government

We are well past the point that this is possible imho. About 10 years too late.

Qatar has most likely turned this option down already - there is no benefit for them. They'd be smarter to wait for UL to collapse and then start up their own Airline in Sri Lanka.

Nobody will invest in an Airline that has huge debts and even more future liabilities. Nobody wants a large group of unqualified and incompetent people who can't be fired.

In its present form there is no conceivable way to ever make this profitable.

Nobody will touch this Airline imho.

Make no mistake - this isn't a business. This is a wealth transfer vehicle - public funds in and funds out to family friends and cronies.

With the past SL gov record I don't think anyone will want to get into an expensive venture of setting up an airline if UL collapses and risk it being nationalized later.

Well you could always:-

-Set up a new Airline as a subsidiary of an existing Airline.
-Register the aircraft outside Sri Lanka.
-No Sri Lankans in any Management positions
-Everyone works on a renewable short term contract.

Government starts causing issues? Pull the plug. Simple.

I think Sri Lankan Airline A350 MSN 60 should go into production before February end or March according to this production UL's First A350 MSN 60??

Part for the first A350 for SriLankan Airlines

http://www.lankabusinessonline.com/i...den-says-eran/

From the article:-

So a Deputy Minister doesn't know how business is done in Sri Lanka?

This is nothing but theft, fraud and corruption - Sri Lankan tax payers get stuck with the bill.

It's not difficult to figure out. Another MiG deal on a much larger scale.

Here's a radical idea - if the reasons aren't known how about an investigation?

A Billion Dollars+ in losses and another Billion in future liabilities - and nothing is being done about it.



Not a bad article by the former temporary CEO.

I can't help but remember no action being taken while he was in charge - another useless NATO member!

Analysis:-

By doing nothing the problems at UL have only grown - requiring increasingly drastic measures. It's simply not realistic to expect a pack of unqualified, government appointed clowns to be anything more than NATO members.

At some point the cash will run out and there will no longer be any choices left. I think they're at this point. Choices will be made for them.

Example:- They don't want to cut European Routes but there's no cash to operate them so they get cut.

If they're in talks with Skyworks Capital then that's an admission that UL has lost control of the situation. In any normal company this would mean the automatic dismissal of the management and board of directors.

My guess is that they tried to offload the A350's to Qatar - another act of desperation.

A real tragedy that things have come to this point.

Is this a new route of SriLankan Airlines?


------------------------UPDATE-------------------------------
Just found out that South Asian Games are scheduled to start on 05th February at Guwahati, Shillong.

So this flight could be carrying participants for it

But UL is going to get A350 or not?

SriLankan Airlines flight UL171 Colombo - Bangalore returned back to Colombo after 20 Minutes. The aircraft climbed up to 4100 feet.

Aircraft Registration - 4R-ABQ

Anybody knows the reason for this?

Sri Lankan A350 / UL#1 (MSN52) undergoing fuselage join in Station 50

The first is in Parts arriving at TLS and the next two frames are close behind, parts for their third have been seen. MSN52 fuselage sections have been spotted in Station 59 yesterday. So 52 into FAL next week and 60 early March ?

We will see what happens !

A fully painted tail fin for MSN52 has just arrived in TLS.

a fully painted tail fin for msn52 has just arrived in tls.