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Hambantota | Mattala International Airport | Completed

69K views 183 replies 43 participants last post by  VisionJ 
#1 ·
The Mattala International Airport is an international airport currently under construction in Mattala, in the Hambantota District in the south of Sri Lanka. Upon completion, the Mattala International Airport will be Sri Lanka's second international airport, joining the Bandaranaike International Airport. It will primarily serve the city of Hambantota, along with the southern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka.

Initial plans to build an international airport serving the south of Sri Lanka at Weerawila, but these plans were scrapped due to environmental concerns. The site was then moved to Mattala, a small town 15 kilometers north of Hambantota. Construction on the $200 million first phase of the airport began in November 2009, and is expected to be completed by December 2011, with the first flight scheduled to land in January 2012.



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#160 ·
Addressed to GAYAN

Even the autobahns have an advised speed limit ,and the vast majority of country's expressways top speed limit is 120 kmph, which is SE speed limit is going to be raised to, which you would know if you read the newspapers.
The port is not supposed to be open yet, that was political posturing.
The airport was built near a bird sanctuary, not in one.
"What else more"? How about before you start criticizing others, you learn to write/type properly?
And you want to start "small businesses"?!? What are you on man, what makes you think this will benefit the countries economy?

And you say that Sri-Lanka is being unsustainable, and you cite African countries, which are now so heavily indebted to China their whole future is in doubt? You're a funny guy.

I have news for you. Tourism accounts for less than 3% of our economy. It is rising, but that's what it is at right now.

"White Elephant" this "White Elephant" that. No proof, no back up, no argument. Just go away and stop embarrassing yourself and us.
 
#162 ·
Addressed to GAYAN

Even the autobahns have an advised speed limit ,and the vast majority of country's expressways top speed limit is 120 kmph, which is SE speed limit is going to be raised to, which you would know if you read the newspapers.

Look here dude.... first of all learn to accept criticism. It is obvious your ego compensates for your lack of character. You have no right to tell any member to go away. This is an independent forum, and everyone has the right to express their thoughts. I can effectively counter all your arguments with facts and links, but I won't because my time is more important than, dealing with an ignorant person like yourself. I have been a silent observer, and joined this forum way long before you did. And I have come to realize all the time how you always put dull comments but never contribute anything tangible. all the best!
 
#175 ·
Economic punches and developmental disappointments might have bruised and battered Mahinda Rajapaksa’s once enormous popularity among Sinhala masses. Yet a considerable part of it still endures. There is nothing outlandish about this; despotic leaders are usually popular, for a while, before the devastating costs of their rule become manifest. Vellupillai Pirapaharan was popular in his time. So was Adolf Hitler, until the Americans’ daylight carpet-bombing of German cities and the Red Army’s arrival on the borders of the Thousand Year Reich compelled ordinary Germans to realise the inevitability of a defeat on a Götterdämmerung scale.

Mahinda Rajapaksa is popular among Sinhala masses because his promise of ushering a developmental Shangri la is believed, still. He has credibility because the 30 year Eelam War came to a victorious conclusion under his leadership. The non-appearance of the much anticipated peace dividend and the consequent exacerbation of economic hardships have dented, somewhat, the hope of a richer tomorrow. But a huge chunk of the Sinhala South still clings to the belief that the Rajapaksas can and will deliver the promised felicitous future.


The Siblings would know the importance of keeping that faith alive. They would also know that economic outrages, such as the electricity rates hike, can cause serious fissures in that belief.

The Rajapaksa development strategy is an amalgam of economic neo-liberalism and state capitalism. Their stirring populist rhetoric serves to cover a gamut of policies which are iniquitous, viscerally. The Siblings follow a tax-borrow-and-spend approach, with crucial differences. Their taxing is of the indirect variety, targeting essential goods and services; therefore a disproportionate share of the tax-burden falls not on the rich but on those clinging to the bottom half of the income-totem pole. When it comes to spending on popular needs, the Siblings are deficit hawks. But they spend, limitlessly, on megalomaniacal projects with nary a benefit to the economy at large, or to the people in general.
Mihin Air, which never made a profit in its entire existence, is an excellent symbol of the counter-developmental effects of Rajapaksa development. So is the highway craze. The Southern Highway is costing the nation an annual loss of Rs. 5.5 billion; according to Prof. Amal Kumarage of the Transport and Logistics Management Department of the Moratuwa University, “The annual revenue collected from vehicles using the Expressway is approximately Rs 1 billion, whereas the maintenance and debt service cost is around Rs 6.5 billion” (Ceylon Today – 29.3.2013). That Rs.5.5 billion could have been used to improve feeder roads, rural roads and public transportation. But the Rajapaksas are as unconcerned about popular needs as they are blasé about economic logic. All they care about is their power and their glory.

Mattala Madness

Mattala Mahinda Rajapaksa Airport is a metaphor, not just for Rajapaksa development but also for Rajapaksa Rule.
The Mattala Airport was built not to fulfil a national, regional or developmental need but to satiate a Rajapaksa desire. In Rajapaksa Sri Lanka, the premier international airport cannot be named after a bygone ruler (especially since his retired-daughter remains a bit of a headache). Since the name of the Katunayake airport cannot be changed from Bandaranaike to Rajapaksa without creating some unfavourable flutters in the SLFP, the obvious way out is to build a new airport and name it after the new rulers. The long term Rajapaksa plans might include turning Hambantota into Lanka’s administrative capital (after changing its name to Sri Rajapaksa Pura). The plan to shift the National Lotteries Board to Hambantota might be the beginning of a generalised transfer of state institutions to the new epicentre.
A new capital would need a new airport.

Passengers and airlines are not exactly flocking to Mattala. But birds are. Mattale airport is close to the time immemorial flight-paths of migratory birds. Then there are peacocks – the symbol of God Kataragma/Skanda, and sacred alike to Sinhala-Buddhists and Tamil-Hindus; plus elephants and other wild animals.

Already two airlines have had close encounters of the avian kind. If the word gets around, not even the most outrageous concessions would succeed in attracting international airlines to Mattala.

Thus the launching of a new ‘humanitarian operation’, to turn Mattala into a bird-and-animal-free-zone. It includes plans to closedown waterholes and destroy feeding-grounds in the area which have sustained the bird and animal populations for millennia.

http://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/the-idiotic-gene/
 
#178 ·
Apr 22, Colombo: Dubai based airline, flydubai, will start scheduled operations to its second destination in Sri Lanka, the Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport in Hambantota, on 21 May 2013.

The carrier announced that in addition to their current daily flights to Colombo, it will start three-times a week service on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays to Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport from 21 May 2013 and on a daily basis from June.

The airline would be the second international carrier to fly to Hambantota after Air Arabia.

More than 30 percent of flydubai's total passenger traffic to Sri Lanka in 2012 was connecting traffic from Central and Eastern European countries and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Southern and Eastern tourism will receive a major boost with this move.

The carrier launched flights to Colombo in July 2010 with a four-times weekly service. Following increased demand this rose to five times a week two months later, before daily operations began in March 2012.

Flights to Hambantota will operate three-times a week from 21 May 2013leaving Dubai on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays at 2250hrs, landing in Mattala International Airport at 0635hrs local time following a stop in Colombo at 0555hrs.

The return flight, direct to Dubai departs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0730hrs, arriving in Dubai at 1050hrs local time.

http://www.colombopage.com/archive_13A/Apr22_1366646054JV.php
 
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