Selling SriLankan Airlines In ‘Grand’ Mother Country
Sarath de Alwis
The current cause célèbre over the position of Sales Manager of SriLankan Airlines in London is a reaffirmation of the hopelessness, futility and the sheer lunacy of hoping to run an efficient, profitable state owned airline. A state owned enterprise is everybody’s business and nobody’s liability.
The United Kingdom has the largest Sri Lankan diaspora community. Sri Lankan airlines with daily flights to London is the umbilical cord that keeps all those of Sri Lankan origin in the United Kingdom in a state of perpetual patriotic pregnancy. I borrowed and amended the curiously covetous phrase ‘permanent pregnancy’ from the Indian American émigré writer Jumpha Lahiri’s novel ‘The Namesake.’
‘Ethnic traffic’ is a pivotal component in the ‘marketing mix of the National Carrier. The Foreign Service and the Aviation industry of the ‘Mathru Bhimiya ‘are the two domains over which almost every Sri Lankan in ‘Old Blighty’ will claim matchless mastery. I make these authoritative pronouncements from experience gathered during nearly eighteen months of serving as the Manager of Air Lanka in the United Kingdom under the Executive Presidency of Ranasinghe Premadasa.[A disastrous period in my professional life]. The Premadsa Presidency is important to this narrative because, it reveals certain facets of our polity that have not changed despite the emergence of the ‘Borderless flat world’ of Tom Freidman.
The Manager of Air Lanka in London at that time had to contend with a complex hierarchy. In addition to the conventional reporting structure, the Manager was in constant contact with the Chairman in Colombo. “Venerable Walpola Rahula thero is traveling to London. His Excellency wants him well looked after. The Thero is feeble. Arrange for an Ambulift”. Done. Venerable Rahula in London tells a press reporter that Minster Gamini Dissanayake gave him a plot of land near Parliament for his ‘Awasaya’. The Manager receives another call from the Chairman. “Please don’t upgrade Ven.Rahula to business class. We don’t want complications.”