SriLankan Airlines develops a hub at Mattala. Two international airports may be one too many

SriLankan Airlines is gradually building up services at Mattala Rajapaksa International, which became Sri Lanka's second international airport in Mar-2013. While there are some opportunities to build up the local market, which consist primarily of inbound leisure and outbound labour traffic, Mattala is emerging as an alternative transit hub airport to Colombo.

SriLankan now links Mattala with five international destinations while sister carrier Mihin Lanka operates one route at Mattala. Both carriers plan to bolster their existing Mattala services with additional frequencies and start routing more international services via Mattala.

So far virtually all the passenger traffic at Mattala has been transit. While local traffic may grow over the long term the primary focus is now on further building transit traffic, particularly Indonesia-Saudi Arabia and Maldives-China connections. But this detracts from SriLankan's main hub in Colombo and both of the country's two carriers are too small to have a viable two-hub strategy.