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One thing worth noting is that, with a theoretical max capacity on only 1 million, this airport would actually be pretty tiny by world standards. (The largest
by jpatokal 9y ago
One thing worth noting is that, with a theoretical max capacity on only 1 million, this airport would actually be pretty tiny by world standards. (The largest do >100m, and even Colombo Airport pulls in nearly 10m.)
By comparison, another famous white elephant airport, Ciudad Real in Spain, was built for 10m and currently serves precisely zero.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Real_Central_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Real_Central_Airport
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- puranjay 9y agoI was in Sri Lanka in summer this year. Outside of international tourist arrivals (all at Colombo, which itself is a tiny airport), there is practically zero internal air travel. The country is so tiny that you can go across the breadth of the country (Colombo to Trincomalee) in 4-5 hours by bus. Or you can take a helicopter/private plane (which are pretty cheap) and do the same distance in like 45 minutes. I can't even imagine any situation where an airport serving a million people outside of Colombo would even be remotely feasible.
- jpatokal 9y agoEasy: Direct international flights, particularly for tourism. For example, in Thailand, the airports of Phuket and Krabi are only ~2 hours apart by car, yet cater to 15m and 5m pax/year respectively. Now I'm sure it made no sense to build the airport at Sri Lanka's current stage of development, but as the country gets richer, it's almost certainly going to become useful sooner or later.