Sri Lankan Airlines prepares for the possibility of flight cancellations. The Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) failed to import the necessary jet fuel into the nation as a result of the foreign exchange crisis, prompting the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to issue a warning recommending airlines to carry fuel for their return flights.
Around 700,000 litres of fuel are used each day by SriLankan flights out of Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA). Up until last week, SriLankan Airlines was able to get, on average, about 250,000 liters each day. The airline implemented “tech stops” on some routes to lessen the uplift from Colombo because this wasn’t enough to satisfy the criteria, although doing so came at an additional cost.
Since June 29, the technical landing facility at Cochin has been used by six SriLankan aircraft heading for Sharjah, London Heathrow, and Frankfurt, two Air Arabia flights bound for Abu Dhabi, and one Jazeera Airways flight headed for Kuwait.
The management of SriLankan informed its staff through internal memo last week that the airline ran out of jet fuel stocks on June 29th, and as a result, scheduled flight operations are likely to be interrupted from July 1st to July 18th.
The Government has given holders of bunker licenses the ability to import and supply jet fuel immediately in order to address the jet fuel shortfall, breaking CPC’s monopoly in the jet fuel sector.
Additionally, SriLankan Airlines intends to transport jet fuel from India using a special A330 aircraft.
