Review of SriLankan Airlines flight Colombo → Singapore in Economy

Prelude

An interruption to my regularly scheduled programming. It is from a boutique co-working space-cum-café in Canggu, Bali, Indonesia that I have been applying the finishing touches to this report, and not without creating a bit more history in my flight adventures. Having never flown on any SkyTeam airline before, I was blown out of this world when I found out that my flight here from Singapore (KL835 on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines) would be operated by PH-BVD, a 777-300ER in the SkyTeam livery. It’s nothing short of an extraordinary wonder to have stepped on that special plane, to lose my SkyTeam virginity — pun fully intended, as Virgin Atlantic Airways has joined the alliance — and in some style indeed.

This two-day trip is as much about the new alliance as it is about the new country, with my return on hometown SkyTeam airline Garuda Indonesia (36 hours after arrival) on two A330-300s from Denpasar back to Singapore via Jakarta, which are mentioned towards the end, in the travelling bonus and conclusion. (Those trip reports I intend to publish after a few months: the KLM one in October, when the world’s oldest airline turns 104, and the Garuda ones in November.)

Back to scheduled transmission: my even briefer stopover in a new island country, consisting of but a single island instead of hundreds of thousands, and home to a tiny Oneworld carrier instead of a large (though greatly shrunk) SkyTeam one.

Introduction

This is a continuation of my previous flight on SriLankan Airlines from Chennai to Colombo, the last time I would be leaving Chennai for ages to come. Good thing it was a morning flight, because I have never been a big fan of leaving your homeland at night, especially when it brings to an end the biggest portion of your life so far. However, as daytime flights from India to Southeast Asia are extremely limited in number, at least for nonstop flights, going via a third country was the best choice, and SriLankan was an attractive widebody option I’d never taken before. Though the promised new A330-300s could not turn up (as they typically do on MAA–CMB and CMB–SIN) for either leg, as both legs were operated by the 1999-built A330-200 4R-ALB, I nevertheless had an enjoyable experience on Oneworld’s smallest full member — thanks especially to the IFE and hospitable service, the latter of which UL is renowned for — and cannot wait to fly it again on its A330-300 or A321neo.

There’s another interesting fact that I forgot to include in the last report: I work on the top floor of a modest office building in Tampines, in the eastern end of Singapore near Changi Airport, and the floor immediately below it has a SriLankan Airlines office! I had noticed it a few days before this India trip, and it was a nice little coincidence that served to round off my fascination behind this tiny South Asian carrier, the best in the region alongside Vistara, which will cease to exist next year when it is acquired by Air India. Despite its limited fleet and bleeding bottom line, UL has consistently gone above and beyond with its service and product — a big factor behind its gaining acceptance into Oneworld, which I think is the alliance with the highest quality despite (or because of?) having the fewest members, thanks to the likes of JAL, Finnair, Cathay Pacific Airways and Qatar Airways.

This continuing leg, UL308, to Singapore took off in the brightness of noon and landed when the sun had not quite begun to set over Changi, giving me ample time to relax before returning to work the next day. Too bad it’s much more difficult trying to take SriLankan to Bengaluru, my parents’ new home city, as it has a reduced frequency there; Chennai is the single most important Indian city for traffic to both Singapore and Colombo, with the others far behind. Turns out there are some disadvantages to leaving Chennai after all! ;)

As for who are the two celebrities in the cover image — well, you’ll have to scroll down to find out!

Pictured below: The SriLankan Airlines office in the CPF Tampines building, Singapore. 

Old-world Colombo charm

Some airports are a luxury destination in and of themselves. Singapore Changi is the best-known example, but Doha Hamad has been working its ass off by blowing billions of QAR on the Louis Vuitton Lounge, the Dior Café and the Jewel-like Orchard garden, in an all-out, no-holds-barred effort to dislodge those pesky Southeast Asians from the top. Anyone who’s watched the FIFA World Cup last year will know only too well that Qatar Airways and Hamad Airport lost no opportunity to toot their horns as the WORLD’S BEST AIRLINE AND AIRPORT. Which brings us to the opposite end of the ostentatiousness spectrum, on a much smaller, humbler, simpler member of Oneworld.

Colombo’s Bandaranaike is most definitely not such an airport. You transit via this relic of the 1980s not to stroll by Prada and Armani boutiques (as you do in Changi) or identify each aircraft type in the fascinating model display (as you do in KLIA), but simply to get off one plane and on the next — or, in my case, the same plane. (Actually, this is the same approach I adopt at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi, whose ‘industrial’ décor I am not really fond of. It is only the top floor with its King Power duty-frees that is actually impressive, and not the rest of the place, especially its ultra-high-ceilinged gates which make me shudder in fear of the ceiling falling.) But I’ve talked about those places at length in the past, and so let us return to this old and unassuming little airport.

Who is worse? Comparing two of South Asia’s most outdated airports/terminals

You may ask me: Proximanova, you love to moan and groan about how awful your former home of Chennai Airport (MAA) is, so what do you think is worse, Chennai or Colombo? I have a few points:

1. I no longer have any relationship with MAA airport, and thank goodness for that, as my parents moved to Bengaluru this month. Their loss (they dread the traffic, and the new house is remote and has NO air-conditioning!), but my gain (good riddance to the horrible AAI ground staff and complete absence of proper shops at MAA, hello sweeping architectures and glitzy retail outlets at BLR). Chennai, along with Kolkata, will forever be branded as AAI strugglers while Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad leap ahead.

2. That said, MAA is very slowly improving, as a week after I left, it inaugurated its New Integrated Terminal Building, the first phase of which will be used only for international flights. My jaw actually fell open in shock when I saw Twitter footage of the test arriving flights from destinations like Dhaka, Singapore and Kuwait. Was this really Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Airport with its swish travelators that I was looking at?!?! This is nothing short of a quantum leap for what has historically been one of India’s worst airports, and I can only hope that not only MAA but the upcoming Parandur airport — the furthest from a city centre in South Asia — when it comes up in the late 2020s do not disappoint hereafter. Too bad that Parandur, like MAA, will also be run by the state-run AAI, and not the private firms that will run the upcoming Noida/Jewar Airport (Flughafen Zürich AG) and Navi Mumbai Airport (Adani, which also runs Mumbai’s existing CSMIA plus 6 others).

3. Coming to Colombo, the architecture is pretty much of the same generation as MAA’s old international terminal, and unlike MAA, CMB has no newer buildings with better design. What goes in CMB’s favour, however, is the multitude of shops and duty-free outlets — especially electronics! (from what I’ve heard; I barely saw the place beyond Gate 14) — and these add some diversity and diversion for passengers. MAA is absolutely lacking in that department, in the international terminal at least, as whatever bookshops and eateries there are are woefully inadequate and mismanaged.

So MAA may lose on facilities and maintenance, but it is making up in other areas, while CMB may have a wide range of shops, but it is desperately lacking in the aesthetics department. It shouldn’t have been the first impression that an island country of 22 million makes on the world, but it is what it is, and as long as your airline is good — SriLankan or otherwise — you are free to disregard the airport.

On with the actual report! 

From Russia, with love: A glimpse into the world’s largest (and now most disconnected) country

Sunday, 2 April, continued. At a quarter past eleven, I had stepped off 4R-ALB, only to get back on in a little more than half an hour, as the same gate was servicing both the UL122 arrival from Chennai and the UL308 departure to Singapore. All there was for me to do at the gate was show my boarding pass and go through the Changi-like at-gate security check.

Meanwhile, the departure at the other gate was Azur Air’s ZF1648 to ‘Tolmachevo’, a.k.a. Novosibirsk (OVB). That is home to S7 Airlines, which like SriLankan is not on most people’s minds when they think of a Oneworld carrier. While the lime-green-liveried S7, Russia’s second-biggest after Aeroflot, has a much bigger and more modern fleet than its South Asian alliance partner — consisting of a number of A320/1neos and 737 MAX 8s before the invasion put an end to new deliveries — it’s had a far smaller worldwide reach, even before the pandemic and war. Azur Air, on the other hand, operates mostly ancient 757s and 767s from the 1990s but has a wide range of destinations across Asia, as you’d expect from a Russian holiday airline.

That so many Russians had escaping their severely embargoed homeland for a vacation to sunnier climes — and were now returning to their frigid homeland, cut off as it was from most of the West, which holds all power in today’s world — was a surprise to me. I am not used to seeing them in such vast numbers, certainly not since the war. While the world’s largest country has not witnessed even an iota of the violence in Ukraine, its people have consequently been subjected to numerous punishments, and travelling abroad — even to Turkey Türkiye — is a luxury few can afford.

On this side of the gate were the Lankan locals queueing up to take a trip to the premier city of Southeast Asia, as far removed from Russia as possible economically and geopolitically. No wonder Singapore Airlines was among those to ‘suspend’ service to Moscow, unlike Emirates Airline, Turkish Airlines and co., which are a lifeline to the throngs of hard-pressed travellers at Domodedovo.

If grey sweeping arches are the first thing that greet travellers at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi, Colombo Bandaranaike’s closest equivalent is these semi-octagonal blue pillars.

You may think that 4R-ALB, built in 1999, is no spring chicken, but that’s nothing on the grand old 767-300ER next door: RA-73030 was built in 1991, before the fall of the Soviet Union! Russian airlines have thus far enjoyed a glut of Western aircraft orders since then, but the invasion has put a stop to that, at least for the foreseeable future. It will then have only its own indigenous manufacturers to fall back on, and the Irkut MC-21 and Sukhoi Superjet must now play the role that Ilyushins, Yakovlevs and Tupolevs did in ages past.

One has to wonder whether Russian airlines will have to put safety on the line for the next decade or so, and fly aircraft without the ability to service them reliably — much like their counterparts in Iran or Afghanistan, where you’ll be hard-pressed to find an aircraft in service that was built after 2001. Indeed, Aeroflot has already started to service its A330s in Tehran. As they say, birds of a feather…

Meanwhile, a far newer (but also far more troubled) aircraft took off. This was flydubai’s A6-FMM, a 737 MAX (with lie-flat business class!) taking off as FZ1026 to Malé, en route to Dubai. You can very well imagine that other A6-F** 737s continue to fly to Moscow, Novosibirsk and everywhere in between, from Samara to Ufa — and even Minsk!

Never mind the photo ID, IMG_0747: the Queen is the last thing you’d expect to see taking off at Colombo in the post-pandemic world.

Enough with Russia, and now it was time to hook up to the Wi-Fi service of the airport. It will win no points for its logo or design, much like the airport itself, but it did the job and very well at that. It was a much-needed connection back to Chennai to inform my parents of my whereabouts. Not everyone at CMB will have a Dialog or Mobitel SIM card to fall back on!

Speaking of Dialog, an ad for the country’s largest mobile network adorned the aerobridge to the aircraft, as the mostly Lankan crowd busied themselves, left to their own devices.

An LG TV, in the guise of a photo frame with what looked like medieval artwork, was the only attraction at the gate.

Meanwhile there was an Indian A320neo visitor — Vistara’s VT-TNY (UK131 from Mumbai) — with another, IndiGo’s VT-IJO (which had followed us as 6E1175 from Chennai), not long thereafter.

Soon enough, at 11:50 or so, my brief sojourn in Sri Lanka had come to an end, and I was back on 4R-ALB, in the same row as before (54) and also in a window seat but on the opposite side. I don’t miss not seeing the rest of Bandaranaike at all, there being hardly anything to see anyway in the old terminal, and getting back on the same aircraft was as quick as it was efficient — the only downside (for an avgeek) being a repeat registration, something I always hope to avoid!

The flight: Boarding and departure

Flight: SriLankan Airlines UL308/ALK308
Date: Sunday, 2 April 2023
Route: Colombo Bandaranaike (VCBI/CMB) to Singapore Changi (WSSS/SIN)
Aircraft: 4R-ALB, Airbus A330-200
Age: 23.4 years (built: 7 October 1999, delivered: 15 November 1999)
Seat: 54A
Boarding: 11:40am SLST/IST (UTC +5:30); 2:10pm SGT (UTC +8)
Departure: 12:40pm SLST/IST (3:10pm SGT)
Arrival: 6:45pm SGT (4:15pm SLST/IST)
Duration: 3 hours 35 minutes

Notes:
* Second flight on the A330-200 after the previous flight (UL122) on the same aircraft. Third flight on a Oneworld airline and on the A330 overall, after UL122 and MH180 (9M-MTH) in October 2022.
* 4R-ALB is my first repeat registration since VT-EXL (AI A320neo) in late 2019, breaking a long streak since January 2020 of not repeating either a flight number or a registration, though this included almost two years of no flying (March 2020 to December 2021) due to the pandemic — but Singapore Airlines’ Restaurant A380@Changi event in October 2020 is included in that streak.
* One of the oldest aircraft ever flown. The record stands with VT-ESE, a now-scrapped 1993-built Air India A320 flown in December 2012 (AI765 MAA–CCU) and the very first aircraft in my log.

SriLankan’s blue seats with their aquamarine patterns have to rank among the most colourful and elegant in recent memory, with only Thai Airways’ upholstery beating it. (Ironically, TG’s horrible old 777-200ER had much brighter seat covers than the new A350 and 787!)

There was, interestingly, a pamphlet warning passengers against unruly behaviour on board. Air India would do well to have one, given the number of urination incidents that have plagued it in 2023 — not to mention just about every US carrier, as there’s nothing like flying American, Spirit or United with a fistfight on board. And only a few days ago it emerged that an AI cabin crew member was abused by a passenger…

Interestingly, in addition to the standard troika of English, Sinhala and Tamil, there were also Russian and Chinese, if only on the cover: a possible nod to tourists from those countries, as seen with the Azur Air crowds next door.

The IFE screen at 54A had just started to load, and while the glare couldn’t be helped, it was nevertheless as complete as you could get in terms of hardware, including the headphone jack and the USB port.

Funnily, the thank-you screen was the first to be shown…

… followed by the proper welcome screen with the airline and alliance logos and slogan. The word ‘Begin’ alternated between the same five languages above. (No, no thin white ring here: only the standard-issue blue circle of Oneworld, in existence since 1999, the very year this plane was made. However, the cutlery pack served with the meal does have the thinner ring version, as does the IFE on the modern A330-300, which displays it prominently in the top corner.)

Then came the main home menu, which was what the previous UL122 leg had jumped straight to, without the welcome screen.

The bulkhead screens had a different sort of ayubowan, saying ‘SriLankan welcomes you aboard’.

Flight attendant Manisha, in a peacock-feather saree as bright blue as the seat covers, is seen here lifting a suitcase into the hold.

Then I asked her for a glass of water by way of a pre-departure beverage (no champagne here!), which was duly complied with.

Meanwhile a 6E A320neo passed by us: this was the same VT-IJO, following us from Chennai, that had arrived there from Kuwait as 6E1242 before coming to Colombo as 6E1175.

A company A330-300 accompanied us on the runway.

Once again the animated safety video played out, with our little passengers at the window. Some amount of innovation here with these animations, but you can well go further than that, as I saw on KLM the other day — with its animated safety procedures etched into Delft blue tiles in the form of outline drawings!

En route were A9C-NE, a Gulf Air A321LR…

and an all-white A320, presumably of FitsAir, the Lankan low-cost startup.

Rendezvous with Kumar Sangakkara and Jacqueline Fernandez (not that I’d known it then)

But the animated safety video wouldn’t be the only one of the afternoon: SriLankan now presented its brand film, entitled ‘Serendipity Right Next Door’ — too bad it didn’t insert a Serendib-ity pun right there — which was released in February 2020, the very month before the pandemic struck the world. What’s special about this video is not only the tropical, marine visuals and generous hospitality on offer, but also that it features two of the most famous people the island has produced: Bollywood (Hindi film) actress Jacqueline Fernandez, and cricketer Kumar Sangakkara, widely regarded as one of the best wicketkeeper-batsmen to have played the game. It was significant enough for me to include them in the cover image, along with the radiant smiles of the cabin crew that are the most visible signature of this airline, their sarees a brighter blue than the logo of the Oneworld alliance.

Cricket and Bollywood as important to the ordinary Sri Lankan’s psyche as to its big northern neighbour, and many UL passengers — Indian ones in particular — will have no doubt recognised Sangakkara being served by the smiling flight attendant in the airline’s peacock saree uniform, or Fernandez frolicking by the beach. However, I had not taken note of the two celebrities at the time, as I was more focused on actually recording the three-minute brand video as the A330 pushed back. Which is just as well, since the only version you’ll find online is a truncated 90-second one, and I have attached both versions for comparison (though mine is greatly hindered by glare!). It is only now, while writing this report, that I actually searched for this video and found out that Fernandez and Sangakkara had taken part in it! 

First my glare-ridden but more complete recording of SriLankan’s brand video:

And then the official, but shorter, version released by the airline itself:

This is what I could capture of the celebrity pair, as well as the cabin crew member who served the elegant former left-handed batsman: not very good shots, but these will have to suffice.

And then some of the more idyllic locations across the country, showing the tourists and cabin crew at their warmest and most hospitable, be it by the oceanfront or on an A330-300. However, it must be said that it’s nothing on Bali as far as connectivity and global recognition are concerned, but the two are equally poised for their hospitality and smiles.

And finally a nighttime pool party, capping off a great, polished presentation that left me cheering for this little airline with a big heart. I hope it is able to expand its fleet in the short term by leasing some aircraft, especially as 4R-ALB and her ilk will soon bow out from the fleet after a glorious 23 years of service — which is also the number of aircraft UL has after the retirement of 4R-ALA.

This is in sharp contrast to Fiji Airways, another Oneworld airline (if only a ‘Connect’ partner) from a tropical island, which has an even smaller fleet — a pair of A350s, four A330s (three -200s and one -300), a few 737s including MAXes and some ATRs — but has managed to have a much more modern and cutting-edge offering, thanks especially to those two A350s.

Now we passed some more company aircraft in the hangar.

At 12:40pm we finally took off, bringing my stay in Colombo — or I should say Negombo, the suburb to the far north that hosts the airport — to a C(o)lo-se.

Entertainment and catering

The moving map was fairly intuitive and easy to use, and easily the most important IFE feature to me on any airline.

I positioned the headphones next to a list of airline codes I’d created, zoomed up on the two best airlines of South Asia, as seen in the caption below.

It didn’t take long for the drinks service to roll out, and this time the Fontana πορτοκάλι (orange) juice from Greece was replaced by μήλο (apple) juice. But as for the actual meal, that was served at 13:30 Colombo time (16:00 Singapore time), an hour into the flight.

This, then, is how the Oneworld logo should be done. You can’t get rid of the circle altogether — unless you are the team behind Qatar Airways’ online Google ads, which threw out both the oryx and the blue circle, leaving only wordmarks instead — but you certainly can flatten it to an inconspicuous ring.

The meal itself bordered on the ‘Indian Chinese’ side: pepper chicken with cucumbers, accompanied by a salad of beans and corn, along with a salad with raisins, as well as a fruit bowl for a dessert. There were also a milk sachet and drinks of choice, mine being water and my go-to Sprite. One of the more exotic airline meals I’ve had in a while, and if the flavour of the chicken is any indication, probably a taste of South and East Asian fusion cuisine — though I would rather a sweet dessert be served instead of only fruits.

Rediscovering a childhood favourite

The meal done, I ambled through the music selection of SriLankan Airlines, with a bunch of albums from the Subcontinent and the world. A.R. Rahman, one of India’s most feted musicians, is known for mainly Hindi and Tamil songs, in addition to many other languages. It was one of his compositions that particularly caught my eye.

The 2010 Tamil romantic drama Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya (Will You Cross the Skies for Me?) tells the tale of two star-crossed lovers, and its songs were a staple of my childhood — though until now I hadn’t even known that they came from this film! I had heard the romantic ballad Mannipaya (Will You Forgive Me?) so many times, as well as the energetic numbers Omana Penne and Anbil Avan (whose name I didn’t know), but it was only now that I could associate them with VTV, as the movie is popularly abbreviated. I did, however, know that Hosanna, another romantic melody, came from VTV. Needless to say, the rest of the flight was spent reconnecting with these childhood favourites, and discovering a few others from the movie, all with music by A.R. Rahman.

So much so that I often lost track of the screen, and had to be prompted to turn it back on!

The neighbouring screen was playing what I can only describe as a thriller or sci-fi movie, given the weird hairstyle and piercing look of the woman below.

Other passengers continued to mill about, some asleep, others taking advantage of the movie selection, and still others going to and fro towards the restrooms.

Meanwhile I perused my report on the last time I flew this aircraft type and this alliance, with Anbil Avan from VTV fror company. I didn’t even know the name of this song before this flight!

And then proceeded to update the other half of my journal entry, as only the left side was filled on the first flight.

Ah, good old Changi: Boring but best in the world

At half-past six the clouds had given way to rivers and fields, and then to the tell-tale ships of Changi before finally the buildings of eastern Singapore came into view.

This A330-200 did boast of a belly cam — a great thing indeed given its advanced age — and now was the best time to use it, when the view was unobscured by clouds.

At a quarter to seven, with the sun still up in his or her position (depending on which language’s gender you choose), my final trip from Chennai came to a close with 4R-ALB putting down her wheels at Changi.

Few big global hubs are complete without the sight of an Emirates A380, and this one was A6-EOO, going by the list below. Turning A6 upside-down gives you 9V, and this is naturally the only airport in the world where that prefix predominates the scene — thanks to the blue-and-gold and sunny-yellow aircraft, or the occasional silver one with an orange star.

The arrivals were ecletic, ranging from Chinese B- aircraft to Indonesian PK- ones to Australian VH- ones, to the odd OH- from Finland or HL from Korea — not to mention our 4R- from Sri Lanka. They provided some respite from the typical nines (9V and 9M) that flood this region, and I’m especially happy to have flown on a registration that begins with a digit other than 9.

The disembarkation was as orderly as it gets on a South Asian airline outside South Asia — that is to say, not too orderly nor too disorderly.

The smile on the flight attendant’s face (never mind the blur) as she namaste-ed me out the door is enough reason to fly SriLankan Airlines again.

Typical SQ aircraft for company: a 787 on the left, an A350 on the right…

… and another passing up behind our little old A330.

Now I was inside T3, with a ringside view of the Jewel Changi…

…that only got better on the travelator, with the Skytrains doing their business alongside.

4R-ALB had had a long day, another in the 23 long years of her existence, and I caught one last look at this bird, as well as the other one (the peacock) on her tail. While I would have preferred an A330-300 and not a repeat registration, this was nevertheless a pleasure to fly on — but Garuda Indonesia has now fulfilled my wish: see conclusion!

As you can well expect at T3, SQ accounted for half the departures of the night, most of them to India or Australia. There were the odd Star flights to other destinations — Air NZ to Auckland, United to San Francisco — plus SkyTeam flights on Garuda Indonesia, with ours being the only one for Oneworld. Non-alliance airlines were Etihad and the two Batiks, from Indonesia and Malaysia.

Further down the travelator was the Crowne Plaza of Changi, with its distinctive architecture that is impossible to miss.

The departures at other terminals were mostly Indonesian before eight p.m. and Indian ones thereafter, with other Asia-Pacific destinations scattered around. I saw nothing to or from Europe, at least not in the left half.

Then on it was to Immigration. That HSBC ad has now given way to Standard Chartered, and one day it will be replaced by local bank UOB, but the result is always the same. I beat the queues (if any) thanks to the automated passport counters and emerge in seconds.

Then it was a matter of picking up my heavy luggage, and putting the lid on what had been a lovely nine days with family, in my old home city of Chennai and my new one in Bengaluru. It had started with a Vistara A321neo to Mumbai, and it had ended in an equally memorable fashion here.

Changi Airport’s food street that isn’t Jewel

But the story doesn’t end here. Before I proceeded home I went down to the basement food court of Changi T3, a mall in its own right, never mind the fact that Jewel exists. It has a bewildering array of food outlets that should satiate every palate from across the world.

I had one of the multi-nutrient bowls from a Superfood store.

It was only at half-past seven that I proceeded to the pick-up area, where some arrived with their Rolls-Royces and others with their plebeian Mazda3s.

Before I knew it, I was out into the night, in safe but lonely Singapore, filling me with longingness.

The ‘Welcome to Singapore’ sign almost depressed me instead of cheering me up, as the next day was a Monday and all that it stands for!

I did, however, look at my journey for the day, and that made me smile: it’s not every day you get to see a new island country and airport. But I knew full well that in two months’ time I would be adding two other island hubs — Ngurah Rai and Soekarno–Hatta — to that map, and I can rest today knowing that I have finally done so!

Bonus : Click here display hide

Some pictures from my transit at Jakarta today (i.e., the day of publishing this report, 4/6/2023) — but only insofar as they relate to SriLankan Airlines, so as to not deviate from the topic.

1. The pretty SriLankan check-in counters at Soekarno–Hatta International Airport, and my comment for the same. I do hope UL puts in this branding effort at CMB as it does at CGK!

Note to self: If Kuala Lumpur Airport is far south of the city, Colombo far north and Hong Kong, Taipei and Seoul/Incheon far west, Jakarta must be far northwest — and Phuket for that matter.

2a. An aerial post-takeoff view of 4R-ALS, SriLankan’s A330-200 which had landed at Jakarta — though frustratingly I missed capturing the landing by a hair’s breadth as my A330-300 (PK-GPU) was taxiing; it would have been the perfect way to round off this report. Two A330s of airlines from tropical island countries, renowned for their smiling crew and service — yet unable to expand their fleet and reach.

2b. You can see that 4R-ALS’ landing was right in the line of sight as we (GA836, PK-GPU) were taxiing. They say the best camera is the one you have with you, but on this occasion it was as good as none at all. What goes around comes around!