SriLankan Airlines (UL, Colombo International) said it will seek to sub-lease or charter one of its A330-200s, 4R-ALS (msn 1008), as this particular aircraft is "not suitable" for the airline's current business model.
"The cabin configuration of this aircraft, which was manufactured in 2009, is not suitable for SriLankan Airlines’ operations, having many seats and minimum space between seats in its Business Class cabin. The aircraft remains at Colombo International as part of the SriLankan fleet, although it is not in use due to the above-mentioned reasons," the airline said in a statement.
SriLankan also confirmed it is currently using the Airbus widebody for spares and it has removed one of its Rolls-Royce Trent 700 engines to use it for one of the active A330-200s.
The aircraft in question was added by SriLankan Airlines in 2017 as a part of a settlement with AerCap against the cancellation of the order of four new A350-900s. It was previously operated by Hi Fly (5K, Beja) as CS-TFZ. Following the 2017 transaction, the aircraft was never actually taken up by SriLankan and continued to be operated by the Portuguese ACMI/charter specialist through September 27, 2018. It was then repositioned to Colombo on October 3, 2018, and has remained grounded there since, Flightradar24 ADS-B data shows.
SriLankan Airlines currently operates six A330-200s in active service. Each of them is equipped with 18 business class seats and 251-256 economy class seats. For comparison, 4R-ALS has 42 business class seats and 288 economy class seats.
