-
SriLankan Airlines in the context of the country’s financial meltdown
by
Whither the national airline? With the country embroiled in a financial meltdown of unprecedented proportions, on Wednesday, July 20, 2022, Parliament confirmed Ranil Wickremesinghe as the nation’s eighth Executive President by a clear margin. One of the many challenges facing the new President is the future of the state-owned national carrier, SriLankan Airlines. A perennially…
-
A new type of Bubble
by
Travel Bubbles We have all heard of ‘financial bubbles’. Every decade or so Wall Street produces one that eats up our investments. Students of history will recall the Tulip Bubble of 17th century Holland and the South Sea bubble a hundred years later in England, both of which led to speculative frenzies followed by financial…
-
Storing all those unused aircraft
by
What do you do with an aircraft that isn’t needed? Sri Lankans of a certain age will remember the brutal recession that occurred in the 1970s. A combination of the oil crisis plus socialist economic policies, saw a rapid destruction of wealth and wholesale unemployment. The middle class of the country was practically wiped out…
-
The MAX dilemma and a lost wager……..
by
Boeing, the MAX and the Virus Boeing, the world’s oldest and (until recently) largest aircraft manufacturer, has had an ‘annus horribilis’ since the second fatal crash of the best-selling Boeing 737 MAX in March 2019. As the anniversary of the tragic crash approached, Boeing was a facing a financial crisis on top of being dethroned…
-
Cargo – the last hope?
by
Freight offers hope In a world reeling from the catastrophic drop in passenger traffic induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, cargo is offering some consolation to airlines. Prior to the crisis, about half the world’s airfreight was carried on passenger jets as underbelly cargo. Even on a flight full of passengers with baggage, the cargo hold…
-
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
by
The leader of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia was of course talking about those fateful days in 1917 when the Romanov Empire was overthrown. Lenin would barely recognize today’s world and he could never have imagined that an invisible microbe would create even greater changes than his revolution did, just over a hundred years later.…
-
The Lockheed TriStar – a forgotten marvel
by
The Lockheed L-1011 TriStar – forever the bridesmaid, never the bride Sri Lankans of a certain age will recall the TriStar fondly. It was the flagship of national carrier Air Lanka at a time when the country was exiting a long period of austerity with hopes of ushering in the dawn of prosperity. The glory…
