Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2012-05-16

Annual Report and Accounts of Sri Lankan Airlines for the year 2011

- the Government has purchased 94.68% of the shareholding of Sri Lankan Airlines which was earlier held by Emirates Airline and the remaining 5.32% is held by the employees of Sri Lankan Airlines. Some of the activities carried out by the Airline during the year and the review were -

* expansion of our global route network to 51 destinations in 32 countries;
* re-launching of our domestic service, Sri Lankan Air Taxi; and
* addition of one A 320 aircraft, one A340 wide body aircraft and one Twin Otter Floatplane.
The Sri Lankan Airlines will shortly commission an Airbus A320 Full Flight Simulator Centre at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) in partnership with a company in Netherlands and the project is expected to make BIA a regional hub for pilot training. The above Annual Report submitted by Hon. Piyankara Jayaratna, Minister of Civil Aviation, was approved for presentation in Parliament.