UAdrian Schofield:
Welcome, Vipula! And it’s great to have you here with us.
UVipula Gunatilleka:
Yeah. Good to talk to you and good morning, Adrian. Thank you for the opportunity.
UAdrian Schofield:
Right! Well, firstly, I was wondering if you could talk about how the pandemic has affected your operations. It looks like trafficking capacity is still well down, but are they starting to recover?
UVipula Gunatilleka:
Yes. I mean, like many other airlines, our airport came to a total shutdown in March last year, but we were fortunate what we did was being an island nation. We had lot of [inaudible 00:01:15] and also the national carrier. We had to help the Sri Lankan expatriates who were standard there all over the world. So we started a lot of humanitarian or the repatriation operations initially, and at the same time, we started doing our cargo.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have a dedicated cargo care freight as such, but we are making use of all the wide body aircraft. We initially started with the cargo network connecting Sri Lanka with Australia, UK, Germany, France, and all that. Yeah.
UAdrian Schofield:
Right. Okay. When do you think you might see a significant recovery in international passenger demand? And how long do you think it might be until you get to a full recovery?
UVipula Gunatilleka:
Yeah, my gut feeling is by the winter next year, you’ll see the recovery. But what we are projecting this year is since we don’t have any domestic traffic like we are expecting, but 40% recovery at the end of our next financial year, which is ending in March Q1 next year.
UAdrian Schofield:
Ewe. Kunene.
UVipula Gunatilleka:
So full recovery will be going back to pre-COVID level would be ’22, ’23 for us. Yeah.
UAdrian Schofield:
Okay. So sort of your financial year runs through the end of March.
UVipula Gunatilleka:
Yeah. April to March.
UAdrian Schofield:
Right. What do you think your recovery level is at the moment, if you hope to get it to 40% by then?
INTO ONOKUYITHATHA KWELI NQAKU:
- I mean, like many other airlines, our airport came to a total shutdown in March last year, but we were fortunate what we did was being an island nation.
- So we started a lot of humanitarian or the repatriation operations initially, and at the same time, we started doing our cargo.
- But what we are projecting this year is since we don’t have any domestic traffic like we are expecting, but 40% recovery at the end of our next financial year, which is ending in March Q1 next year.
