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Aviation History
1984
1984 - 0026.PDF
Air Lanka currently flies 45 per cent of all tourists arriving and departing from Sri Lanka. The carrier flew 598,174 passengers last year holidays in its homeland. Air Lanka officials attribute the airline's success to the level-headedness and leadership of chairman Capt Wikra- manayake, commonly known as "Captain Wik" He has a philosophy for the airline —"our most precious asset is our people and not our hardware". Capt Wik has a wide experience in commercial aviation. In the Fifties and Sixties he served as a pilot with Air Ceylon, joining Air Siam in 1972 to fly 707s and 747s. In 1977 he became a captain with Singapore Airlines, and he keeps his licence valid by occasionally flying Air Lanka's TriStars. The 100 or so Air Lanka officials and employees who previously worked for Air Ceylon speak with one voice when asked how the new airline compares: "There has been active Government encour agement, the red tape has been drastically reduced, and communication has greatly improved". Air Lanka hopes it will eventually become a public airline. Initially it was planned that the airline would be owned 60/40 per cent by the Government and public sector, but regular injections of Government capital mean that the airline is virtually 100 per cent state-owned. When the airline was formed the Govern ment invested $12-1 million in the airline. An additional $620,000 was provided by the People's Bank of Ceylon in the same year. Since then the Government has invested a further $37 million in Air Lanka and further annual injections of Government money are likely in the future. Hansen says that if the airline can go public it will be able to prove its own strength for the first time. Air Lanka's manager engineering and maintenance, K. (Pat) Poobathy, was seconded from Singapore Airlines in 1979. He has been responsible for the recruiting and training of Air Lanka's 380 ground engineers. Poobathy began by recruiting a number of licensed ground engineers who had previously worked for Air Ceylon but lacked the qualifications to work on TriStars, and trained them in Singapore. He also took on 19 expatriate engineers, and started 70 ground engineer appren tices on a five-year training programme. Poobathy hopes that his engineering workforce will top the 800 mark in the next ten years. He says that Capt Wik has practically given him a blank cheque as far as train ing costs are concerned. Training has been carried out worldwide —in Singa pore, Bombay, Great Britain, California, Air Lanka serves 24 cities in 20 countries Bombay Trivandrum 1 'Bomb » I J Trivariuiuiii L\» J^ m Madras Sa-JfS' mTuuctmaP3«i _^Sj9^m HongKorg,# -^x—»"" —-r V Bangkok Singapore *.»j& 26 Montreal, and Hong Kong. With the recent completion of the airline's new training school in Colombo most of the engineers' training will now be done at its home base. Presently the A and B checks on the engines are done in Colombo, but the C checks are carried out by the Hong Kong Engineering Company (HAECO). The C checks will eventually be carried out in Colombo by Air Lanka's own engineers, following the recent completion of a new $10 million hangar. This hangar, 320ft long and 276ft wide, can accommodate one 747 and half a TriStar with 80,000ft2 of workshop area. Built by Penrinth International and financed by a group of Canadian banks, it will also enable Air Lanka to do the major overhaul of its 737 aircraft, now carried out by Malaysian Airline System in Kuala Lumpur. The introduction of a new module shop in Colombo last month was a project largely encouraged by Rolls-Royce to help the airline cut costs. Poobathy says that every time a TriStar's RB.211 engine is transported overseas it costs about $70,000. "By having a module shop we will save a large amount of money, as we will be able to split the engines and transport them in the TriStar's cargo hold," he says. Air Lanka's 28 expatriate and seven Sri Lankan captains get an average daily airframe utilisation of 13+hr out of the airline's two TriStar -500s and 9lhr on its two -100s and one -1. Training is carried out on Cathay Pacific's TriStar simulator in Hong Kong and on Indian Airlines' 737 simulator in Hyderabad. Each of the air line's senior captains has logged an aver age of 15,000 flying hours, and all flight crew undergo refresher courses every six months. Air Lanka's 400 cabin crew are trained on a TriStar mockup at the airline's new training school in Colombo. The airline FLIGHT International, 7 January 1984
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