Malaysia wasn't a hub but they made it to a hub.. having India in the next door we have a better chance than anyone... for years to come Indians would love to take CMB as their transit...look how SIN became a hub.. size of SIN is hardly size of COLOMBO
they proved size doesn't matter but the attitude...

Fate of Srilankan (UL) pretty much confined to regional air liner whether we like or not.. Can we (UL) compete with EK, QR, SQ or CX?? forget about Chinese...

they have already taken the lead..see not even Indian air liners managed to rise up.?.given the fact that Indian domestic market itself counts for air traffic of sizable few countries...

Should we bring same fate of UL to Sri Lanka (CMB) as a whole... think about it..

typical sri lankan peoples attitude, thats why sri lanka is still in same situation and singapore, malaysia way ahead.....

Not only india, Pakistan people also use CMB as transit when they travel to APAC because their restrictions in Indian air ports... that will also increased

Yesterday's UL141 (CMB-BOM) operated by 4R-ALC returned back to CMB. Heard on the radio that the aircraft had a tech issue and had to return back. 4R-ALC had operated UL605 from MEL just a couple of hours before departing as UL141 last night. 4R-ALC still on ground at CMB.

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/f.../ul141#f84fe67

http://www.dailymirror.lk/article/Sr...IA-140336.html

He got it wrong!"He also said the passengers were sent via another SriLankan flight around 3.34 this morning.
The UL-141 SriLankan flight was a French made A- 320 aircraft." Is it A320 or A330?

I know size doesn't matter, but the problem is the facilities, competitors and place where the country is situated. Well, in Singapore it is bordered with Malaysia, Indonesia and is some what close to China , Thailand and Vietnam, that means many opportunities to make it a hub! This is not the case in Sri Lanka. Only India is a hub! We only have Maldives and India in our vicinity. That means lot of work to make it a hub , Where Chennai has already is a aviation hub! More over there is competition for some routes like SIN-CMB (Sri Lankan, Singapore airlines, emirates, Silk Air) and CMB-MLE(Sri Lankan, China Eastern, China Southern, Korean, Emirates) This means less market share for Sri Lankan Airlines.

Well, there are several inaccuracies in that Daily Mirror article. The article also says the flight reached the destination before turning back but the data on FR24 says otherwise!! UL141 was about halfway to BOM when it turned back. I guess the ADS-B data on FR24 doesn't lie. So it should be A330 but I guess he got it wrong because UL141 was originally scheduled to be operated by an A320 if I'm not mistaken.

Hard to judge how serious Air Asia is about this.

And of course whether they are prepared to do 'Business' Sri Lanka style! This has killed several deals already and cost the country billions in lost revenue.

51% Government control is also a non starter for reasons that I've explained previously.

This would be the end of UL. There is no way they can compete with 300+ employees per aircraft and expensive leases.

This could also be the 'plan B' when the IMF forces the GOSL to close down UL. Hard to tell exactly what is going on.

Is this a scheduled flight?

[IMG][url=https://flic.kr/p/21ww9aV]

Lets talk about Hubs Shall we? I agree that Singapore one of the Major Hubs in South East Asia, so is Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Jakarta,not forgetting Hong Kong and they are all within the same radius like Colombo and its surroundings

You cant say that only India is a hub because even Male is slowly but surely becoming a force to recon with in South Asia. So lets leave India a side, my argument here is why cant Colombo become a Hub like Male? CMB diffidently has more and much advanced "facilities" and i'd say where CMB is "located" from Male isnt a big issue either in terms of becoming a hub
Don't you realize that there are way more carriers serving Maldives than Sri Lanka ? If so they can fly there why not Colombo? Isn't Sri Lanka a Tourist paradise?


I do not agree on this nonsensical "One Airline is Enough" rant.
Take Maldives again, they have 3 Airlines with Maldivian being the flag carrier.
Maldivian has direct competition domestically by the other two players in the market FlyMe and TMA.
The 4th being Mega Maldives, a private airline (under restructure at the moment) which is direct competition to Maldivian but no one there is complaining. Mind you the Maldivian archipelago is much smaller than Lanka.

Sri Lankan Lacks domestic competition since its just Cinnamon Air that operates under the code-share with UL , targeting solely Foreigners... What about us locals? don't we deserve the right to fly within our county as well at a price affordable to all?

If SV781 is flying directly to MED, this would definitely be a Charter flight for Umrah Pilgrims, Siriwijaya Airlines operates inbound flights from Medan (KNO) and Jakarta (CGK) to facilitate Umrah/Hajj Pilgrims who transit in CMB and fly onward to MED/JED on Chartered Saudia flights

Any record of any flights coming in from Indonesia?

Local newspapers should seriously think of hiring people with better knowledge on aviation before making such publications

My first thought on reading this was that another corrupt deal is being set up. From the article:-

A quick search shows this guy is Sri Lankan or a dual citizen. The fact that Sri Lankans are involved is a red flag - although in this case there isn't enough information to determine what is going on.

Anyone know if this guy is 'connected'?

as per Air Asia group CEO Tony Fernandes, the Sri Lanka venture is just a speculation

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/mo...eiOcwMTpGhe.97