Departure
98%
vs 95% ▲ 3
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport (VCRI/HRI) is a large, little-used international airport in Sri Lanka's Southern Province, built as a flagship project of the Rajapaksa government and infamous for handling only a handful of flights a day despite its scale. For a simulator pilot it offers a rare combination of a full-length, ILS-equipped runway and near-empty airspace, set among the plains and jungle north of Hambantota.
Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, known by its IATA code HRI and ICAO identifier VCRI, is a government-owned international airport operated by Airport and Aviation Services (Sri Lanka) in the town of Mattala, in the country's Southern Province. It was Sri Lanka's first greenfield airport and its third international airport, built to serve the Hambantota District. Despite a terminal designed for a million passengers a year, it has operated with very few scheduled flights since opening, earning it a reputation as one of the world's emptiest international airports. For a visiting VFR or IFR pilot in the simulator, this makes for an unusually quiet arrival at a fully equipped, precision-approach airfield.
The airport lies in the town of Mattala, about 18 kilometres from Hambantota in Sri Lanka's Southern Province, roughly 15 kilometres north of the site originally proposed for expansion at Weerawila. It sits within Sri Lankan airspace serving the southeast of the island, and its location was chosen in part for its proximity to tourist areas such as Arugam Bay, Nuwara Eliya and Yala National Park, all reachable from the surrounding lowlands.
Mattala has a single physical runway, 05/23, 11,484 feet long with a hard surface and runway lighting. An ILS is provided for approaches to runway 23, giving instrument as well as visual arrivals a precision option; the runway's great length, built to accommodate the largest widebody airliners, leaves generous margins for lighter simulator traffic.
Ground movements are handled on 121.7 MHz and the tower on 119.85 MHz. The runway 23 ILS provides an instrument approach aid for arrivals from that direction; no other navaid or approach detail is given here beyond the ILS itself.
No published circuit heights, joining instructions or noise abatement procedures are available from the sources used for this guide.
No specific visual reference points are documented in the available sources, though the airport's isolated position amid open plain and jungle terrain north of Hambantota, with the Indian Ocean coastline some distance to the south, makes the field and its long runway a distinctive landmark from the air.
The airport was conceived as Sri Lanka's third international gateway, intended to relieve congestion at Bandaranaike International Airport near Colombo and to support tourism development in the south following the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War. Plans to expand the existing Weerawila Airport were dropped on environmental grounds, and the site was moved to Mattala instead. Construction of the first phase began on 27 November 2009 at a cost of around 209 million US dollars, the great majority funded by high-interest development loans from the Exim Bank of China. The runway, apron and taxiways were finished ahead of schedule by February 2012, and a Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority Hawker Beechcraft B200 King Air became the first aircraft to land, on 16 October 2012, flying eight days of instrument and ILS test flights. A SriLankan Airlines Airbus A330-200 landed on 29 January 2013, followed shortly by an Airbus A320 carrying orphaned children from Colombo. The Civil Aviation Authority certified the field for international operations in March 2013, and it opened for flights on 18 March 2013, with President Mahinda Rajapaksa and dignitaries arriving aboard a SriLankan Airlines Airbus A340 for the inauguration. The first commercial arrival was SriLankan Airlines Flight 226 from Dubai, followed by services from Air Arabia and Flydubai. SriLankan Airlines briefly operated a hub at Mattala using Airbus A330 and A340 widebody aircraft, but low demand led almost all airlines to withdraw by 2018. The airport has since been widely described as a white elephant of the Rajapaksa era, and successive governments have explored privatisation or joint-venture management without lasting success.
Mattala continues to operate at a loss with very limited scheduled airline traffic, and the government has periodically invited private or foreign operators to take over its running, including proposals for a long-term build-operate-transfer arrangement. During the COVID-19 pandemic the field saw some additional use for repatriation, charter and seafarer flights, and there have been proposals to develop long-term aircraft parking, flying schools and maintenance services to make better use of its facilities. The airport retains a full-length, lit runway with an ILS, making it usable for training and general aviation movements even though passenger traffic remains minimal.