Sri Lanka's main international airport will be closed during daytime for three months during the peak tourist season early next year for badly needed maintenance on its only runway, sparking fears of a financial setback for the tourism industry and SriLankan Airlines, the national carrier.
From Jan. 6 to April 5 next year, Bandaranaike International Airport will be closed from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each day. It will be open outside those hours, but airlines will have to reschedule, reroute or cancel many daylight flights.
Travel professionals said the closure will cost SriLankan Airlines $47 million in lost earnings and force the cancellation of roughly 600 flights to key destinations such as Singapore, Chennai, Trichy, Male, Cochin and Bangalore. BIA operates 150 to 185 flights a day, about 30% of which will be affected by the closure.
SriLankan Airlines CEO Suren Ratwatte said: "Our request to carry out the renovations during the night was turned down, despite other airlines managing to convince their (airport) authorities to shift renovations to the daytime ... The decision to shut down the airport during the day is a huge setback for us." SriLankan Airlines lost 16.49 billion Sri Lankan rupees ($111 million) last year.
In the $48.6 million airport improvement project, to be run by China National Aero Technology International Group and a unit of the Civil Aviation Authority of China, the runway will be overlaid and widened. New ground lighting will also be installed. The changes, BIA's first since its construction in 1986, will allow the runway to cope with up to 35 flights per hour, up from 25.
But travel professionals sounded bleak warnings, saying that it would have been better to close the airport at night later in the year. The government said that the improvements had to be done in the peak season because those months are the country's driest. Half of the eight-hours of closure planned each day is to allow the new tarmac to dry.
Decisive factor
Yaseer Jalaldeen, managing director of Frontier Destinations, a travel agency, said tourist arrivals would suffer if limited flights pushed prices higher, and some hotels and companies could be bankrupted. "Most of these service providers operate their businesses with huge commitments to banks. Therefore, there is a possibility of the default rates increasing for these companies and service providers," he said.
"Most of the tourists we receive are from middle income families who are sensitive to price increases," Jalaldeen said. "As such, any increase in airline fare could be a decisive factor for most tourists in choosing Sri Lanka or another destination."
Harsh Vardhan, chairman of Starair Consulting, an aviation consultancy in New Delhi, said the closure would result in unexpected and annoying changes for airlines and tourists because some inbound holidays are sold months or even years in advance. "Even rescheduling of flights has its own consequential impact for transit passengers and connecting flights," he said.
Duty-free shops in the airport will also suffer a loss of income because they will be able to open only at night.
However, Sri Lanka's Transport Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva said the renovation was "mandatory," adding that international regulations would allow BIA to operate for only another year if improvement work was not carried out. "The airport's sole runway will be upgraded to meet international standards," de Silva said.
Sri Lanka has a second international airport, Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, on the island's southeastern coast, but only one foreign airline lands there -- the budget carrier FlyDubai. Some domestic flights also stop there, but the airport is one of the world's least busy.
Some critics of the renovation plan called for daytime flights during the closure period be shifted to MRIA, but the plan was deemed impractical because of the journey time of four to five hours from the airport to Colombo.
Despite the complaints, some in the travel industry agreed that the work was essential. Hiran Cooray, president of The Hotels Association of Sri Lanka, said it was a necessary inconvenience given the state of the current runway. "If the runway has to be done, it has to be done. The safety of the traveler is of paramount importance," he told the Nikkei Asian Review.
Cooray, who is also chairman of the Jetwing hotels chain, said the hotel association had not sought to "create an issue" about the decision to shut down the airport. "If a plane crashes due to poor runway conditions, then the repercussions will be far more," he said.
(by Munza Mushtaq - Nikkei Asian Review)
