Sri Lanka will resume flights from the northern Jaffna peninsula to Chennai by next week, a senior minister has said, three years after the island nation discontinued the services. Sri Lanka's Aviation Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva announced that his country will resume flight services from the northern Jaffna peninsula to Chennai, possibly from December 12. The move is expected to help the country's tourism sector and provide a stimulus to its economy. The tourism sector is the main source of foreign exchange earnings for Sri Lanka.
"The flights to India from Palaly (Jaffna International Airport) will resume soon, most probably by December 12," Sri Lanka's Aviation Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva announced in the Parliament on Monday, December 5. “Flights will be operational between Jaffna and Chennai,” he said. However, the runway will need some infrastructure improvements, he said, as it can only accommodate 75-seater flights at present.
The airport was named the Jaffna international airport in October 2019, and the first international flight that landed there was from Chennai. The 2019 redevelopment of the airport was funded by both Sri Lanka and India. Earlier, India's Alliance, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Air India, operated three weekly flights from Chennai to Palaly. However, when Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the presidential election and resumed office in 2019, the flight services were halted in November of the same year.
The move to resume flight services between Chennai and Jaffna is believed to help the country’s tourism sector and stimulate the country’s economy which had been crippled due to various factors including the pandemic, various policies of the Sri Lankan government, and a huge hit to the tourism sector in the aftermath of the 2019 Easter bombings. Sri Lanka had been heavily dependent on tourism as it is one of the main sectors that generated foreign exchange earnings for the country. According to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, the country’s earnings from international tourist arrivals for November touched USD 107.5 million, with the cumulative tally in the first eleven months of the year notching up a whopping USD 1129.4 million.
Sri Lanka is currently facing its worst economic crisis since its independence from Britain in 1948. There have been protests in Sri Lanka against the government since early April due to its mishandling of the economic crisis, as it led to prolonged power cuts and a hike in prices of food and other essential commodities. In September, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced a USD 2.9 billion bailout package to help the country tide over the economic crisis.