A SriLankan Airlines flight arriving from Melbourne declared an emergency and landed at Bandaranaike International Airport on Sunday night after smoke was detected in its cargo hold. Inspections afterwards traced the smoke to dry ice packed with a consignment of meat.
Flight UL605 was about 15 minutes from landing when smoke began escaping from the lower cargo hold, SriLankan Airlines head of corporate communications Deepal Perera said, according to Hiru News. The pilot alerted the Katunayake airport operations room, and an emergency was declared.
Fire tenders, ambulances, doctors, nurses and rescue crews were moved into position, and hospitals near the airport were placed on standby.
The aircraft landed without incident at 10.38 p.m. on Sunday. No injuries were reported.
Dry ice, not a fire
Checks carried out after landing found the smoke had come from dry ice used to keep a meat consignment cold in the hold, the airline said.
Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide. It does not melt but sublimates directly into gas, producing a dense white vapour that can closely resemble smoke — a known hazard in air cargo, which is why the material is carried under declared-quantity rules.
The aircraft was examined further and departed Katunayake on another service on Monday morning.
Not independently confirmed
Hiru put the aircraft at an Airbus A330 wide-body carrying 258 passengers and 15 crew. The aircraft type is consistent with the airline’s Melbourne operation, but the same passenger and crew figures also appear in reports of a separate UL605 emergency in February 2024, when a Colombo-bound flight turned back to Melbourne after smoke entered the cabin. The load figures for Sunday’s flight should be treated as unconfirmed.
Ada Derana has also reported the incident, but the site has been returning blocked responses to automated requests for several weeks and could not be verified directly.
