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Usually late: 900 SriLankan flights delayed in a month
More than 900 SriLankan Airlines departures were delayed in February, with 280 of them leaving Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) and other airports more than one hour late, according to data obtained under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The February on-time performance (OTP) of the airline was even worse than its January record when 840 departures were more than 15 minutes late (it was 911 in February), with 121 of them being more than one hour behind.
The Sunday Times received monthly OTP data for SriLankan Airlines from January 2015 to February 2018. The industry definition of “on-time” is the percentage of flights that leave within 15 minutes of scheduled departure.
Flagging punctuality is the latest predicament faced by the struggling national carrier for which there is no taker despite the Government trying for months to find a partner. Unions have repeatedly criticised the airline’s management and Chief Executive Officer for the airline’s accelerated slide since 2015. SriLankan has responded by contracting an international aviation consultant to float a restructuring plan.
Of 2,826 departures in February, 145 were delayed between one and two hours; 88 were delayed between two and four hours; 35 were delayed between four and six hours; and 12 were delayed by more than six hours. And of 3,155 departures in January, 97 were delayed between one and two hours; 10 between two and four hours; three between four and six hours; and three more than six hours. Such disruptions translate into millions of dollars in losses for the airline.
A large number of delays in February –3 9 direct and 308 consequential — are attributed to “technical” reasons. Eighteen of them were experienced on the airline’s narrow body aircraft while 21 afflicted the wide body planes. Thirty-three of these flights were held back more than four hours. The February OTP report says technical delays have “significantly” increased by eight percentage points from 3.8 percent in January to 11.8 percent the following month.
Major disruptions last month include two aircraft returning to ramps, 12 “AOG” or aircraft on ground situations and two diversions. A total of 1,060 hours is listed as being wasted due to delays. The departure OTP percentage for February is a miserable 68 percent. This means that 32 percent of scheduled flights were late. It was 73 percent the previous month.
The last time the departure OTP percentage dipped to 68 was in December 2015. The arrival OTP also dropped to 67 percent that month. (The departure OTP benchmark is 85 percent). In January this year, there were 36 direct technical delays–26 of them on narrow body aircraft–and 79 consequential technical delays. Twelve of them were late by more than one hour. For instance, on January 18, a flight was nearly three hours behind due to “nose landing gear strut fluid leaking from gland seal”.
Two days later, there was a disruption of two hours and 35 minutes to allow an aircraft change owing to the late release of 4R-MRE [an airbus A320-232] after change of an engine. And on January 25 , there was a lag of three hours as an aircraft was changed over the on-availability of 4R-ALD [an airbus A330-243].
The AOGs in January were due to birds striking the aircraft in Colombo and in Abu Dhabi; a technical issue while the aircraft was in Bangkok; and snow and exceeding flight duty period while in Shanghai.
Airline insiders claim that OTP data for March “is likely to be worse”. They cited one example of UL226 which, owing to technical issues, left Dubai airport several hours late on March 26 and then made an unscheduled stop at Cochin airport in South India for a crew change. Passengers stewed inside the plane for four hours in Dubai before spending another two hours on board in Cochin.
Earlier last month, the Airline Pilots’ Guild of Sri Lanka (APGSL) said the loss of a critical operational certification called Extended Twin Operations (ETOPs) by the company prevents newly-leased narrow body aircraft from operating on a direct route between destinations. The union warned that the absence of such certification and the grounding of aircraft due to technical failures had resulted in flight cancellations and disruptions that caused “further unprecedented colossal losses”.
System-wide arrival OTP also dropped by 9 percent from 74 percent in January to 65 percent in February. This means 35 percent of SriLankan flights flew into BIA late. Some delays are divided into punctuality, technical, airline responsible and non airline responsible. In the airline responsible category in February are late closure of check-in counters due to sorting out “overbooking situation”; locating missing passengers; loading equipment breakdown; lack of loading equipment; and late completion of boarding. There are also delays caused by late cleaning due to lack of staff; and late loading due to shortage of ramp staff.
Under engineering delays is late release of aircraft after ‘A’ check; late positioning of aircraft; waiting for ground engineer to sign the journey log (23 minutes on February 21); waiting for ground engineer (31 minutes on February 24); and late release of aircraft after scheduled maintenance. And under flight operations is late flight crew pick-up by transport provider (46 minutes on February 1). Delays caused by shortcomings in airport facilities include check-in counter congestion; remote gate congestion; congestion at scanning; unavailability of gates; and immigration congestion.
Delays at foreign airports are caused by, among other things, air traffic control challenges. SriLankan has said in the past that, for all airlines from West Asia, over-Oman airspace “is a stubborn corridor to fly through with a narrow gateway, an impasse which is not able to cope with the present volume of air traffic in Muscat”. As a result, nearly all of SriLankan’s flights are held on ground in Dubai and Abu Dhabi awaiting pushback clearance despite being ready to leave.
In February, 86 percent of flights from Abu Dhabi; 82 percent of flights from Mumbai; 80 percent of flights from Dubai; and 79 percent of flights from Kuwait were late. But there has, for many years, been a consistent pattern of late departures from certain airports, particularly in West Asia. Aviation experts insist this could be dealt with by “accepting the realities and adjusting the airline’s schedules accordingly”.
Flights arriving late at BIA cause a ripple effect on other routes. “When we have historical data to show our flights from certain airports routinely arrive late, we need to change our schedules to absorb those delays,” one expert said.