Uzbekistan’s Centrum Air has begun scheduled direct flights between Tashkent and Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, a route the Ports and Civil Aviation Ministry says will strengthen air links between Sri Lanka and Central Asia.
The inaugural service operated on Wednesday, 28 October, the Daily Mirror reported. The airline will fly the route twice weekly, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, until the end of March 2027.
The Ministry of Ports and Civil Aviation said in a statement that the new service is expected to strengthen air links between Sri Lanka and Central Asia, and to support the domestic tourism industry and broader ties between the two countries, Hiru News reported at 1.09 p.m. on Thursday. The ministry described the schedule as set for the 2026–2027 tourist season.
Mattala, not Colombo
The choice of airport is the substantive point. The route lands at Mattala in the south rather than at Bandaranaike International at Katunayake, where almost all of Sri Lanka’s scheduled international traffic arrives. The new link is expected to create openings for tourism, trade and business while promoting attractions in the country’s Southern and Eastern regions — the parts of the island Mattala is positioned to serve.
In the other direction, the service gives Sri Lankan travellers easier access to Uzbekistan’s historic Silk Road cities, including Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva.
Royal Spence Aviation, a partner company of Aitken Spence Travels, acts as the airline’s General Sales Agent and Airport Supervision Agent in Sri Lanka.
Context
The route follows a run of diplomatic and commercial groundwork between the two countries. Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan held their first round of political consultations in July, and the governments have since signed arrangements intended to lift trade and tourism traffic.
A note on sourcing
The two filings are independent accounts of the same launch and agree on the route, the inaugural date and the twice-weekly Wednesday–Saturday pattern. They differ only in how they bound the schedule: the Daily Mirror gives an end date of March 2027, while Hiru describes it as the 2026–2027 tourist season. Hiru’s own photograph of the inaugural event shows a backdrop reading “Connecting Sri Lanka & Uzbekistan — Tashkent–Mattala, twice weekly”, which matches both.
Not reported
Neither filing gives the aircraft type, the seat capacity, the fare range, or whether the airline intends to extend the service beyond March 2027. Neither says what passenger volumes the route is expected to carry, whether any Sri Lankan carrier plans a reciprocal service, or what incentives, if any, were offered to bring the airline to Mattala.
