Mihin Lanka: Profit Any Time Soon?
By Aaqib Hussain -
Aaqib Hussain
The airline has been plagued by financial losses, debt, waste, corruption and other irregularities since its inception in 2007. Is this a profitable venture? I feel not, as it is the taxpayer’s money put to use for yet another prestige project.Mihin is another “White Elephant” which served no purpose since the country already had a national airline and it was also in a severe financial mess.
Mihin Lanka (MJ) was incorporated in October 2006 and began international flights in April the following year with a fleet of two wet leased Airbus A320-200 aircraft from the Bulgarian company BH Air. It was set to operate as a low cost model; a subsidiary of the national carrier Sri Lankan Airlines.
The aim of Mihin Lanka was to give an opportunity to foreign job seekers and pilgrims to fly to their destinations at a much lower cost, initially flying to scheduled destinations in South India and the Middle East, connecting its main base of operations Colombo Bandaranaike International Airport with Dubai, Trichy, Trivandrum followed by Singapore and Bangkok following the arrival of their third aircraft which was a wet-leased Airbus A321-100 from the Turkish operator Best Air.
In December 2007 Mihin was forced to ground the A320-200 serving India as the airline had not settled its lease payments. Sri Lankan also withdrew its ground handling facilities for non-payment forcing Mihin to manually push back its aircraft before takeoff. Read More
“We The People”: Reflections On Governance And Civic Engagement In Sri Lanka
It would not be an exaggeration to say that I was deeply humbled by the invitation to deliver the 17th Deshamanya Professor Nandadasa Kodagoda Memorial Oration. At the outset, let me thank the members of the Nandadasa Kodagoda Memorial Trust for the honor of the invitation. Let me express my appreciation to the Trust for deciding to celebrate the life of Prof. Kodagoda in this fitting manner—that of offering an immensely valuable platform to engage in public conversations.
A few decades ago, when I was a law student and then a young academic at the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo, Professor Nandadasa Kodagoda was a huge star in the academic firmament of Sri Lanka. When I think of him, the image that comes to mind is that of a man with a larger than life personality, with a booming and authoritative voice, brilliantly accomplished not only in his chosen field of academic specialization, but also in a myriad other fields. He was the Dean of the venerable Faculty of Medicine of the University of Colombo and later the university’s Vice-Chancellor – dizzying heights for an academic. Read More 