A second runway at Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) is not expected before 2055, Deputy Minister of Ports and Civil Aviation Janitha Ruwan Kodithuwakku said, confirming that an international party hired to finalise the airport’s master plan has recommended modifications to the existing 3,350-metre strip instead, EconomyNext reported.

“They recommended that we will not need a second runway up until 2055, but we will have to do some modification for the existing runway,” Kodithuwakku told the publication, without naming the international consultant. The final master plan is in its closing stage, he said. Sri Lanka had earmarked a second parallel runway projected at up to 4,000 metres under a long-term Phase II Master Plan two decades ago, but the project never moved past planning.

BIA’s lone runway operates near absolute capacity as passenger volumes have surged post-crisis and the airport has taken on a larger South Asian transit role. Any routine maintenance, emergency landing or technical glitch on the strip can trigger a total shutdown of national airspace — a single-point-of-failure risk aviation analysts have flagged for years.

Former Director General of the Civil Aviation Authority Themiya Abeywickrama told EconomyNext that BIA in fact operates well below its theoretical capacity because of institutional gaps — including the absence of high-speed rapid-exit taxiways and a comparatively cautious seven-minute separation between landings. Global hubs typically clear aircraft within one to two minutes; London Gatwick, also a single-runway airport, handled 263,049 movements in 2025 with 45 to 50 departures an hour. Abeywickrama argued a parallel runway built too close to the existing strip would serve “no real operational purpose” and that upgrading the current one would cost a fraction of what a new runway would.

The deferral leaves Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport — operating well below capacity and recently the subject of renewed diversion-traffic interest amid Middle East airspace disruptions — as the country’s only realistic medium-term second-runway alternative.

Sources: EconomyNext — No second runway for Sri Lanka’s BIA till 2055: Deputy Minister.