Air Sri Lanka

On the 15 July 2018, SriLankan Airlines has successfully operated its aircraft 4R-ALR (Airbus A330-343) on the Colombo-Male' route after 4R-ALR been grounded for maintenance/repairs reasons for 48 days. The aircraft was grounded every since it hit the ground lights at Kochi Airport runway. 

 

SriLankan's 4R-ALR hit two ground light while landing at Kochi Nedumbassery International Airport as UL167 on the 27 May 2018 at 03:55 pm. The incident occurred as the aircraft touched down one meter away from the designated path due to strong crosswinds. 4R-ALR "veered toward the runway edge and caused damage to some ground lights" as per news agency IANS report. The aircraft was brought back to the taxiway and all 228 passengers and 12 crew members on board 4R-ALR were safe. After the incident, the Kochi runway was closed for 50 minutes.

 

 

The similar incident happened a couple of days ago to Qatar Airways' Kochi-bound Airbus A330-300 (A7-AEA) aircraft carrying 306 passengers from Doha landed "off-centered" on the runway due to adverse weather conditions in the morning, damaging 12 runway lights. After the incident, A7-AEA (13.9 years old) was promptly returned to the revenue service on the following day, operated as QR1379. 

 

It's shame our dry-leased 4R-ALR (2.6 years old) was grounded around 48 days at Colombo and grounded aircraft would've made extra losses to inefficient SriLankan Airlines management. Air Sri Lanka Forum is curious to know why do the maintenance/repairs have not been done on-time to 4R-ALR which is being used by the loss-making SriLankan Airlines. 4R-ALR was dry leased from leasing company ALC on the 1 January 2016. As per sources, SriLankan Airlines all Airbus A330-343s aircraft were leased above the market rates.