Domestic terminal at BIA

The Airport Aviation Services (AASL) is to build a domestic air terminal at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) in Colombo.

Chairman, AASL, Prasanna J Wickramasuriya, said that the old SriLankan Airline catering service would be used for this purpose.

"We are now drawing plans to get this project off the ground," he said.

The main objective of this project is to enable passengers to take connecting flights to several domestic airports which are currently being developed. He said that they have specially identified Ratmalana, Palali, Trincomalee, Ampara and Koggala for rapid development. "With these airports developed domestic flights can take off from Colombo to these destinations and the passengers don't have to travel to Ratmalana for this," he said.

Mihin Lanka has already announced that they would be starting Colombo-Jaffna domestic flights for BIA. "This too can be operated from the proposed domestic terminal. With a domestic terminal in place a passenger gets the opportunity to fly overseas in less than two hours by taking a domestic flight to BIA and then get a connecting flight overseas," he said.

Wickramasuriya also said that they have restarted the luxury train service from the BIA to Colombo and this is now becoming popular. - SOS