Belarusian national carrier Belavia will resume flights to Sri Lanka from October 27, the airline has announced, according to Ada Derana. The route will be operated on Tuesdays using a wide-body Airbus A330-200, the broadcaster said.
The announcement makes Belavia the first new long-haul European carrier to commit to a Colombo restart this year and confirms the airline’s response to a direct request from Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath. Herath extended a formal invitation to Belavia on the closing day of his official visit to Minsk on 17 May, at a business and tourism round-table that included the carrier and major Belarusian travel agencies.
Sri Lanka is a long-standing leisure market for Belarusian travellers, with more than 10,000 Belarusian tourists arriving each year and roughly 3,000 Sri Lankan students studying at Belarusian universities — figures cited by the Foreign Ministry as the commercial basis for a direct Colombo–Minsk service. Earlier in the visit cycle, Sri Lanka and Belarus held a business round-table in Minsk focused on widening trade and tourism, and President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s government signalled it would back follow-up commercial ties at the second Inter-Governmental Commission meeting due to be held in Sri Lanka.
Ada Derana did not publish the precise routing, schedule blocks or whether the service will operate via a stopover, and Belavia has not yet released a sale fare or codeshare partner. The A330-200 is the carrier’s largest aircraft and is typically deployed on its long-haul rotations to Asia and the Caribbean.
