24 December 2023; Colombo – SriLankan Airlines would like to apologise to those customers who have had their travel disrupted by a number of cancellations and delays over the past few days. Unfortunately, at this busy time, we had two Airbus A330 aircraft grounded for several days, with one requiring an extended check where a part that needed replacing had to wait for manufacturing due to a global supply shortage and the other due to a burst tyre in Paris.
At the same time, we had delays in the arrival of two spare engines and a newly leased A320 aircraft. This severely depleted the available fleet at very short notice leaving us with no option but to cancel some flights and delay others.
We regret that this has disrupted the travel plans of many passengers during this festive season. Our dedicated team is working tirelessly around the clock with support from other colleagues to get everyone to their destinations as fast as possible.
Going forward, the situation should improve considerably in the coming days as we received our newly leased A320 aircraft three days ago, and we have a further two A320s returning to service with replaced engines in the next week. We have also taken a backup A330 from Air Belgium, which arrives this weekend and our two A330s should be back flying by the middle of next week.