SriLankan Airlines

✅ Verified Review | Was a little concerned to use this airline given some of the reviews, but was completely wrong. I found them to be excellent in almost all respects, notwithstanding general economy class space constraints common to all airlines. Online check-in was as per most airlines, and Bag Drop at both London Heathrow and Colombo took just a few minutes allowing plenty of time for airport meals/shopping. We were then welcomed aboard with a bow by extremely friendly, polite and attentive staff (a theme we found throughout the country in fact). Seats: As a 6 footer, seat clearance is a general problem for me on most airlines. This seemingly new A330 in question had room to spare - measured a good 4 inches space in front of my knees, and good seat recline - I managed 6 hours sleep on both outbound and return legs - unheard of when generally I cannot sleep a wink in economy. IFE: Possibly the largest seat back screens I've seen - 10inch - iPad size with full touch screen, dozens of movies, TV series, live news, pause/rewind, gate to gate operation, live cams, etc. Onboard WiFi was available too though I found this a little pricey - the 15Mb I paid for was used up in just a few minutes. Food and drink: Always 2 options (1 always a curry which I find generally reliably good on long flights), and on this daytime flight we were served 2 full meals at the beginning and end of the flight. Drinks were plentiful, full bar, and staff very proactive bringing refills on beer, wine, water and softs for kids. Experience comparable Emirates, Virgin, BA and other highly rated airlines (this is of course a One World partner and it showed). Customer Service: My single complaint preventing higher score was the outbound direct to CMB was amended to have a stop in Male for 2 hours owing to an unforeseen maintenance period at Columbo airport closing the runway until 4pm for several weeks. This added around 4 hours to the trip, though was not the fault of the airline. I had booked 8 months earlier before the work was planned. Others were able to take advantage and fly direct to the Maldives. This however caused problems with seating and I lost the Window seats I had requested for my kids when the flight was re-scheduled (we were given 4 middle seats in a row). Customer Service were responsive to email, but despite multiple attempts, could not seem to undo this issue. All in all a very pleasant experience, and highly recommend SriLankan Airlines.

Bangkok to Colombo with SriLankan Airlines. Airport check in was not too bad, the people checking in, in front of me had excess baggage and chose to argue and delay the process. Boarding was quick, no champagne pre-take off, only orange or apple juice. Took off on time, menus handed out and orders taken including drinks. I didn't receive the drink I asked for. No table cloths. Tray is handed out with both starter and main all at once. Mains are served in heated doggie dishes not plated, small portions, quickly collected and the crew disappeared. No second drinks or bread unless you asked. Crew are polite but not engaging, they just go through the motions. No meet and greet or welcome by purser to premium passengers, unlike Emirates or Qantas. Cabin is clean but the seats are uncomfortable. SriLankan is very cost competitive but their product is very basic and lacks any premium touch . Arrived 10 minutes early.

✅ Verified Review | Dubai to Singapore via Colombo. Pleasantly surprised. Because of the significantly lower price, I was apprehensive about what to expect. However, after reading fairly positive reviews on Skytrax, I decided to give it a try, and would not hesitate to fly them again on some routes. Like the 1x2x1 layout in Business Class. Food is mediocre, but adequate. Service was pleasant, though don't expect it to equal Singapore, Cathay Pacific, Qatar etc. Cabin a little worn, but not a turn off. Overall no complaints. However, don't expect much from their premium lounge at Colombo Airport. A grossly over-crowded mess of mediocrity. Needs to be 3-4 times the size. It was literally standing-room only when we entered at 5AM. Have to wait for a seat to be vacated, & remained so until we departed. Worst business class lounge yet encountered Internationally. Boarding is also an absolute nightmare at Colombo Airport, which is a facility in need of major upgrading, which I understand is due to begin. Mass of pushing, crowding and nowhere to sit at the actual gate where you have to go through a security check. A fiasco of total incompetence, poor arrangement and confusion, and Business Class passengers are just part of the same mob pushing at the gate. No separate boarding privileges. So overall, a pleasant flight experience, matched with a very subpar airport.

✅ Verified Review | Chennai to Colombo return with SriLankan Airlines. Of my 10 years of travel experience to many countries in different airlines, I faced the baggage loss situation for the first time, when traveled to Colombo on 13th Jan by Sri Lankan Airlines. I booked the complaint and taken PIR also. The staff at Colombo airport gave me a contact number for follow up during our stay in SriLanka. Throughout my 5 days stay, I called this number at least 25 times and there was no response at all even for a single time. Somebody takes the call and disconnect, thereby we lose the call charges also everytime! While returning, we are asked to come 6 hours prior to departure time due to renovation of airport and I utilised this time to go to arrival section for knowing the status of my baggage. There were about 500+ unclaimed baggage lying there, out of which my baggage is not found. After spending an hour's time I was told to contact at Chennai Airport. There is no swift response from their Chennai office also. They are simply keeping quite till end of 21 day tracing period and then take their own time to issue the compensation of 20 USD per Kg for the lost-baggage weight, which is not even covering 10% of original value lost. There is hardly any seriousness shown in tracing the baggage and they are testing our patience for providing the letter to process our claim with Insurance. Apart from losing the value of goods, we are facing hardships without the items planned in overseas tourism travel and also losing our valuable time in follow-ups, providing documents until we get the claim.

✅ Verified Review | Colombo to London Heathrow. This was my first experience of flying with SriLankan Airlines and on the whole I was positively impressed. I flew return to Colombo and both flights were early on arrival. Check in was painless and swift. Food was excellent and the crew were professional and well trained. One small gripe was I was travelling with a bicycle and depite following the packaging rules, I was told (at LHR) the bike was improperly packaged and I would have to sign a disclaimer. I refused and directed the agent to the Sri lankan website that clearly showed I had followed their directions to the letter. The bike was then accepted (in a slightly grumpy manner) and was transported without damage.

✅ Verified Review | Seychelles to Colombo. SriLankan Airlines is a good airline but on this sector there were problems with cabin service. The all male crew looked inexperienced. Food service was ponderously slow and halfway down the cabin the choices ran out. Even basics like ice was not available. Otherwise this flight was fine. The seat configuration was a standard 3x3. The flight was smooth, took off 15mins before time and arrived earlier than scheduled.

✅ Verified Review | London to Colombo return. What more can I say than I should have known better? I went with SriLankan Airlines because they were the only people to fly straight from London to Colombo. On the way back, 10 minutes before due to board the plane the flight was delayed. Disorganised staff had no clue what was going on and did not tell us when the flight would be going for 2 hours. Flight ended up leaving 6 hours after expected. As a result, I was so late back to London I missed a friends wedding! When I complained to SriLankan Airlines about this and asked for some sort of compensation for this delay, they said they couldn't give me anything more than an apology because they were not an EU airline and not flying within the EU. They thanked me for my complaint and looked forward to seeing me on a flight again. No chance what so ever. Sri Lanka is a great country and I will be coming back, but never flying with these cowboys.

✅ Verified Review | We were asked to come 5 hours in advance due (3 AM) to airport renovation at Colombo international airport, which we did. Due to technical issue flight got delayed by 9 hours. We were given an option to take hotel or stay at airport lounge. We took the lounge option to avoid immigration process again (which itself would have required us to reach back at airport from hotel 3 hours in advance + 1.5 hour drive to the hotel and 1.5 hours back). We were served very limited food with very sub standard quality. Then after 2 hours we were asked to pay $25 if we want to stay in lounge. If we don't pay then we have to move to the restaurant section. Service was very disgraceful and attendants were rude. There were hardly 15 people in the entire airport yet they didn't open any lounge for us. There was no coordination and communications among them. Sri Lanka is beautiful but SriLankan Airlines services are pathetic. I'd never fly with them again.

✅ Verified Review | I was booked to fly Delhi to Colombo. My flight from Kathmandu to Delhi with Royal Nepal Airlines was cancelled because of weather. I called SriLankan Airlines and told them the problem and I requested a seat on their next flight from Delhi to Colombo, which was the following day. They told me that since I was a 'no show' I would have to rebook my flight at a much higher price than the original ticket. I wasn't willing to pay twice for the flight to Colombo so I didn't fly with them.

✅ Verified Review | We were booked with Sri Lankan Airlines to fly Singapore to Colombo. return. We also reconfirmed this by calling the Call Centre in Colombo and the Singapore office of Sri Lankan Airlines visiting personally. On reaching the check-in counter – approx. 2.5hrs ahead in Singapore, we were told that “our booking doesn’t exist”. We then confirmed with call centre which reconfirmed that our booking had no issue but the airport check-in team couldn’t print our boarding passes. After waiting for 2 hours we were issued hand written boarding passes (I did preserve them) and then asked to go-to the gate. On reaching the entrance, the security officer said how were we sent without an airline escort and sent back. Finally we did manage to board the plane. I didn’t want the same issue to be repeated so emailed [email protected] to confirm our reservation. The response was – as we didn’t fly on 18th our return ticket was cancelled. I then sent pictures of our boarding passes, luggage tags and entry stamp on our passports. After a few calls and follow ups the customer service centre confirmed by calling me on the day before that the reservation is confirmed. I also got an email confirming the same. On reaching the counter for the return flight, we were again greeted with the same problem, that our booking had some issue. After harassment of about 1.5-2hours we were finally issued our boarding passes with seats in 3 different places (we were travelling with a child). This is despite telling the check-in clerk to block 3 seats right at the beginning. Our seats were changed to enable 2 of us to sit together. On the flight, there was another surprise awaiting us as our child was given another kids food and then requested to return it. Not to forget for both sectors, we received the Bid to Upgrade and our bids were even accepted. Glad we didn’t win the bids. Sri Lanka is an amazing country with amazing people. But at the same time the incompetence from Sri Lankan Airlines will definitely rank it as once of the worst in Asia.