Sri Lankan Airlines to be run by government again: official
Jan 08, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka's government will take the reigns of SriLankan Airlines after a management agreement with Emirates Airlines ends in March 2008, the head of the island's investment promotion office said.
"The president has decided that the government will run SriLankan Airlines from April," Board of Investment chief Dhammika Perera told LBO.
"This is according to the government policy of not privatizing state enterprises."
He said the government had control of the airline with 51 percent of the shares.
Emirates Airlines, whose management contract expires on March 31 has a 43.6 percent stake in the airline.
Emirates says it is looking for 150 million dollars for the stake.
Sri Lanka last month canceled the visa of the resident manager of the airline appointed by Emirates.
This followed an incident where the airline failed to offload booked passengers to fly a presidential entourage from Britain.
n 1998 Emirates paid 70 million dollars for a 40 percent stake in Sri Lankan Airlines in two installments of 45 and 25 million dollars.
However the partnership has been dogged by controversy with various interests, some political, criticizing the deal as favouring Emirates.
At the time Emirates took over management, the then Air Lanka had four ageing gas guzzling Lockheed L-1011 Tri-Star aircraft which were acquired in 1980 as well as three new Airbus A340-300 aircraft and two A320-200 aircraft.
With the fleet of nine aircraft, it carried 1.2 million passengers and 36,400 tonnes of cargo, in the 1998 financial year. Emirates then re-branded the airline as SriLankan, dumped the Tri-Stars and re-fleeted the airline exclusively will Airbuses.
Ten years later in the 2007 financial year, with a fleet of 14 airliners and two Otter seaplanes SriLankan carried 3.1 million passengers and 88,800 tonnes of cargo. It had 6.5 billion rupees in cash reserves.
The partnership with Emirates came after Sri Lankan, then known as Air Lanka was propped by by taxpayer funds.
Sri Lanka last year started a new state budget airline, Mihin Air, amidst much controversy about its financing.
The airline has since made news after it ran up debts with state petroleum firm and SriLankan airlines also recently briefly halted ground handling services pending payments.
Wait & See, Hope they will handle this properly
btw Gov has to find $150million in order to buy this