• CEO calls for fleet doubling; acknowledges constraints posed by debt and govt.’s fiscal situation
• Govt. allocates Rs. 20 b to repay airline loans, seeks to ensure operating profitability

SriLankan Airlines’ growth ambitions are curbed by debt issues and the government’s poor fiscal position as the airline should ideally double its fleet over the next five years, the airline’s Chief Executive Officer Richard Nuttall said.

In an interview with Bloomberg at Aviation Festival Asia 2025 in Singapore yesterday (18), he said that the airline’s growth is constrained by debt issues and the government’s poor financial situation.

“Ideally our fleet should be double what it is in five years,” Nuttall said. “We still have an awful lot of legacy debt and we need to find solutions to that before we go out and do big aircraft orders.”

The carrier operates an all-Airbus SE fleet of 24 jets, split evenly between long-haul and short-haul routes.

While Sri Lanka’s government has decided not to privatise the carrier, it “knows how important the airline is to the economy,” Nuttal told Bloomberg. “The government is going through an IMF process and is not hugely wealthy.”

Sri Lanka’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said during his 2025 budget speech to parliament Monday that the government proposed to allocate Rs. 20 billion ($ 68 million) toward repaying the national carrier’s loan capital and interest payments.

President said that the government will sign agreements with banks which have funded SriLankan and give Rs. 10 billion for principal repayment and Rs. 10 billion for interest.

“The airline would be fully responsible for ensuring operating profitability once these legacy debt service costs are settled by the government,” the budget speech said.

Moreover, Nuttal said that any new jets would mostly be used to increase the frequency of flights to existing destinations.

The airline flies mostly to India and South Asia, as well as domestic routes.

Nuttall added that while the airline would look at both Airbus and Boeing Co. when ordering new planes, choosing the US manufacturer would require a “wholesale fleet change” so would have to be a longer-term consideration.