Missing the bus once again!
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Coming down the lane was Aldoris, the choon paan karaya, in his mobile tuk-tuk bakery, with the popular Desmond De Silva hit, ‘Sumihiri Pane’ blaring from the loud speakers.As he stopped at the gate where the trio had gathered, he handed over ‘kimbula bunis’ and Chinese rolls and tried to engage the trio in a conversation about the forthcoming elections. But they were not interested as the topic of the conversation at that point was a recent visit to the Grama Sevaka by Mabel Rasthiyadu.
“Mama grama niladhari mahaththayawa hamu wenna giya sahathikayak ganna. Hondata wede wuna. Godak wela polimey inna wuney nae. Eya vineetha widihata katha kara (I went to meet the Grama Sevaka to get a certificate and the service was good. Didn’t have to wait long in the queue and he was very polite),” she said.
“Godak wela ehe wagey wenne nae. Sumaharu akaryakshamai saha naraka vidihata katha karanney (That doesn’t happen often as some Grama Sevakas can be inefficient and often rude),” noted Kussi Amma Sera.
“Saema witama novey. Kolomba distric lekam karyalaya karyakshamai. Niladhari hondata kathakaranawa (Not all the time. Even the Colombo District Secretariat is efficient and its officers are polite),” said Serapina.
Aldoris, realising that this was a conversation where he couldn’t contribute, then said bye-bye and proceeded down the lane to feed other neighbours.
At the same time I had walked into the kitchen where my piping hot mug of tea had been prepared by Kussi Amma Sera. As I fetched it, the home phone rang and the caller was Kalabala Silva, the often-agitated academic, who on this Thursday morning was calm and quiet and not agitated as per his usual self.
“I read an interesting piece in an Indian newspaper about an emerging aviation hub in India that would rival the three Middle East hubs – Dubai, Doha (Qatar) and Abu Dhabi,” he said.
“It would be interesting to see whether this would also impact on travelling Sri Lankans who use these hubs to go to Europe and North America,” I said.
“Who knows, maybe in the future it would be cheaper to fly to these destinations via India,” he said.
“Maybe you’re right but it would require a considerable number of new aircraft in India to emerge as a regional hub. What would happen is that Delhi or Mumbai airports would serve as an internal hub for travellers from other local destinations seeking to fly to Europe, North America, Africa or the Middle East,” I said.
We then got into a conversation on proposals or plans as far back as early 2000 to develop an aviation hub in Sri Lanka. In fact, governments’ have been talking of aviation and shipping hubs to serve the region for many years. But more on this later.
In a recent Indian newspaper, Arved von zur Muehlen, Chief Commercial Officer, Saudia Airlines, reportedly described Air India as a ‘sleeping giant’ and said its rise would impact the three popular Gulf hubs.
“They have a legacy. They have the hearts of the Indian population. If they get it right, it would be more at the expense of the three super-connectors,” he said.
Millions from India travel overseas, one of the largest segment of travellers in the world, and, according to official data, a significant portion — over 70 per cent — of passengers flying on Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways flights from India used the three hubs, Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi, as transit points for travel between India and third countries in February this year, said a report in India’s Business Standard newspaper.
Air India, which was in 2022 acquired by the Tata Group from government control, has a fleet of 138 aircraft but has plans to buy 470 new Airbus and Boeing aircraft at a cost of US$ 70 billion, according to newspaper reports, making it a formidable global airline operator, gearing not only to service Indian travellers but also others in the region.
US airlines have the largest fleets in the world, with American Airlines topping the list with 1,539 aircraft. Emirates from Dubai has 250 passenger aircraft with new orders for 310
wide-body aircraft.
So, where does Sri Lanka fit in with its much-touted plans to set up a regional hub in Colombo or Mattala? In the sphere of shipping, to some extent Colombo and Hambantota ports serve as feeder ports with trans-shipment taking place on a reasonable scale. According to experts, Sri Lanka has an excellent location providing connectivity to move cargo to and from Asia to the rest of the world. They say more than 60,000 ships use Sri Lanka’s shipping lane and this can be transformed into a lucrative business for the country if local ports are geared to provide efficient and effective services.
In April this year, Hambantota port had its first trans-shipment with carrier ‘MSC Ingrid’, unloading more than 500 TEU of trans-shipment containers to be reshipped to a second carrier, ‘MSC Sky 11’ going to another destination.
Until then, Hambantota was only a roro – Roll-on/Roll-off – hub where vehicles are driven in and driven out on their own from a cargo ship. Carriers bring in the cargo and then these vehicles are loaded onto another carrier going to a second destination.
Coming back to the aviation hub status, this conversation took place even before Mahinda Rajapaksa won power as the President in 2005. An aviation hub was spelt out in his election manifesto – ‘The Mahinda Chintana’. Most probably, the Mattala Airport development was also started with prospects of an aviation hub emerging in Sri Lanka.
But now Air India’s and India’s potential plans to attain hub status would scuttle Sri Lanka’s long-standing dream of becoming a hub in the region and we would have to kiss goodbye to these elaborately laid plans on the drawing boards, over the years.
The hubs that Sri Lankans use now to take connecting flights to Europe or North America are in the Gulf or Singapore, while earlier they were London, Paris, Amsterdam or Frankfurt. For Sri Lanka to be at a regional hub, we need at least 50 to 100 more aircraft, more airport runways and more passenger terminals. Sri Lanka is a speck in the world of aviation with the national carrier having just 21 aircraft, some not operational.
Sipping my second mug of tea as I completed the column, I reflected on our favourite habit of grand plans and talk-talk-talk and only talk instead of transforming these plans into reality. We seem to have missed the bus once again!
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