Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2017-12-12

Improvement to the Passenger Terminal Capacity of the Interim Terminal Building at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA)

- The design capacity of the passenger terminal building of the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) is 6 million air passengers per annum. However, 9.5 million air passengers have been handled in the year 2016 and this number continuous to increase annually. As such, in order to increase the annual passenger handling capacity up to 15 million a project for the construction of a new passenger terminal has been initiated.

It is expected that the construction activities of the terminal can be finalized around the year 2022 and until such time, in order to address the congestion of the air passenger traffic, as an intermediary solution, it has been proposed to construct a pre-fabricated passenger terminal. Accordingly, the proposal made by Hon. Nimal Siripala de Silva, the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, to take necessary action to finalize the construction of a pre-fabricated building by the end of year 2018, to facilitate 400 departing passengers in an hour at peak hours, was approved by the Cabinet.