Sri Lanka’s national carrier, SriLankan Airlines, has no plans for an expansion into the United States and Canada but plans to connect through its oneworld partners to London, Frankfurt, and Tokyo, Ashok Pathirage, the airline’s chairman said. He also discussed the difficult situation of the airline. SriLankan happy to serve the US and Canada through oneworld. “We never had plans of expansions (to) the US and Canada. We are connected through our oneworld partners that (fly from) London, Frankfurt, and Tokyo,” the chairman told AirInsight in his office in Colombo. SriLankan joined the oneworld global airline alliance (which includes British Airways, American Airlines, Japan Airlines, and Qantas) in 2014. The airline currently flies daily non-stop between Colombo and London. Asked whether SriLankan will use the opportunity of an open sky agreement with India to link Sri Lanka through India to other countries like Pakistan, Pathirage replied: “Not really, because we are trying to fly to all these destinations direct.” India and Sri Lanka signed an open sky agreement in early 2000. The open sky agreement with India allows SriLankan to operate the Colombo-Mumbai-Karachi route and carry passengers from Mumbai to Karachi. The airline operated this route till a few years back. However, this was not the only route from Colombo via India to a third country which SriLankan was allowed as part of the open sky agreement. Not the time for a privatization The situation is different for now. The airline has been facing losses for years. Last month, SriLankan reported a Rs 248 billion loss for January to April. There is about $850 million of debt on SriLankan’s balance sheet, most of which belongs to government entities like two banks and the petroleum cooperation for oil. The SriLankan board of directors has proposed to the government how to privatize the airline, Pathirage said. The privatization was announced in May by then Prime Minister and now President of Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickremesinghe. But there has been no forward movement yet. Sri Lanka is in one of the worst political end economic crises right now, which recently resulted in unrest that forced President Rajapaksa to flee the country. The airline’s board is of the view that there are a few ways of privatizing SriLankan, including raising money through selling part of or the whole catering business. “I think, first of all, we have to reduce the debt at the airline level, before we privatize the airline because otherwise, prospective investors might want the government to take part of the debt, like what has happened in India. And also it may not be easy to sell the whole airline because we have all the rights at the airport, landing rights and all that, which, is (with) our government right now,” Pathirage said. In India when the government decided to sell its entire stake in the national carrier, Air India, the Tata’s emerged as the winners getting full control of the airline in January this year.
