SriLankan Airlines blamed a rat for grounding one of its Airbus aircraft for three days, causing significant delays to numerous flights and raising concerns about the image projected to potential investors who the airline hopes will help it out of its crisis. The rat was spotted Thursday while attempting to access a SriLankan Airlines flight from Lahore, Pakistan, prompting the airline to carefully investigate to ensure the animal had not damaged sensitive components of the aircraft. According to an airline official, the plane resumed operations since then, but the delay affected other flight schedules. The official stated that “the aircraft was grounded in Colombo for three days” and could not “return to the skies until confirming the rat was found,” adding that the small animal was eventually found deceased.
The airline, which reported cumulative losses of $1.8 billion at the end of March 2023, is also struggling with a foreign currency shortage to pay for mandatory engine repairs, resulting in three of its 23 planes being out of service for more than a year. Successive governments have failed to sell SriLankan Airlines, with one even reducing the asking price to a symbolic one dollar, to no avail. Aviation Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva told reporters that the rat incident could raise concerns among “the few investors” still interested in purchasing the airline, which is among the state-owned companies considered a burden on the country’s budget by the International Monetary Fund, which provided Sri Lanka with a $2.9 billion loan over four years in 2023.
