Sri Lankan Airlines Flight Delay Alert in 2018, Viral as Recent!

Sri Lankan Airlines is the national airline of Sri Lanka, operating flights to various destinations around the world, mainly from Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA), Katunayake. However, Sri Lanka Airlines has been experiencing a troublesome period recently, with many debt burdens and technical issues leading to flight delays. As a result, frequent criticisms from passengers have damaged the reputation of the national carrier of Sri Lanka. Some complaints seem fair and just, but some criticisms are unfair and unrelated to the airline's current situation. This is our investigation of one such misleading criticism.

Misleading Tweet

A Tweet shows a flight delay notice and implies that it's recent while pointing out many weaknesses of the national career.

It is just a matter of time before a @flysrilankan critical incident. Besides pathetic service, flight delays, multiple break downs, the news out there is maintainance of the aircrafts is extremely poor and the pilots are overworked. most pilots have migrated amd left the airline pic.twitter.com/1Gkk74gPlT

— Nami Samarawickrema (@Nemal77PhD) May 30, 2023

Archived

Users commented on it like below.

We decided to do a fact-check on this.

Fact Check

First, we did a reverse image search using the flight delay notice and found out that the flight delay notice of a viral tweet was published in 2018 in web media and is not recent.

Issuing an urgent travel alert in 2018, Sri Lankan Airlines announced that their “customers had been subjected to great inconvenience and delayed flights due to a combination of unforeseen events, including a bird strike which damaged an aircraft in Cochin”. Accordingly, SL Airlines had requested the passengers to contact their 24-hour call centre on 0094197331979 or their respective travel agent before going to Bandaranaike International Airport.

The Daily Mirror news report from 26^th February 2018 can be read here. Archived. Here is another news report from Sinhala regarding the technical issues which led to the flight delays in February 2018.

However, we did not notice such a delay notice from Sri Lanka Airlines recently, and the Media spokesman of Sri Lankan Airlines, Deepal Perera, also confirms that they have not released such a delay statement recently.

However, even now, there are many negative comments from the passengers of Sri Lankan Airlines about flight delays. As a result, Sri Lankan Airlines also recently clarified some flight delays and diversions, as seen here.

A social media post about a recent flight delay can be read below.

Here is another recent post from a passenger condemning the services rendered by Sri Lankan Airlines, and some passengers were considerate about the delays and ongoing issues at Sri Lankan Airlines, including limited resources, as seen here

And mainstream media reported such major flight delay incidents recently as well. Around a month ago, a flight from Sri Lankan Airlines was delayed in Melbourne for 30 hours due to a mechanical failure. A report about that can be read here Archived.

Around a week ago, 48 Sri Lankans selected for Korean job seekers in Sri Lanka failed to board a flight to South Korea also due to a 10-hour delay in a Sri Lankan flight. The report about that can be read here. Archived

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Conclusion

Our investigation found that the flight delay note shared on Twitter is not from a recent notice issued by Sri Lanka Airlines and relates to an incident from 2018. Issuing a flight delay alert in February 2018, Sri Lankan Airlines stated that the delays were due to unforeseen reasons like bird strikes on aircraft. However, recently also, there have been some minor as well as major flight delays in Sri Lankan Airlines flights due to various reasons.