https://aviospace.org/sri-lanka-mattala-airport-worlds-emptiest/ Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:21:27 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://aviospace.org/sri-lanka-mattala-airport-worlds-emptiest/#comment-6428 Mon, 24 Aug 2026 16:52:27 +0000 https://aviospace.org/?p=1547#comment-6428 […] The BBC reported that in 2012, the number of bird strikes to civil aircraft in the US was 10,343 – a six-fold rise from 1992. While aviation has gotten lot bigger compared to the nineties, the number of Canada geese in North America now has also doubled in the same timeframe. The rise in the number of birds isn’t the only reason behind a surge in the number of bird strikes, though. To take an example of a different continent, an Air Ivory Coast flight collided with a Rüppell’s vulture at an altitude of 30,000 ft. [To put this in perspective, this altitude is greater than the height of Mt Everest, where a helicopter had once landed]. Perhaps aircraft are treading on spaces where they didn’t before, and often find themselves on collision course with birds. Bird strikes coupled with environmental threats, and political ineptitude resulted in Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport (MRIA) earning the curious moniker of being “the emptiest airport in the world”.  […]

]]> https://aviospace.org/sri-lanka-mattala-airport-worlds-emptiest/#comment-6398 Mon, 24 Aug 2026 11:17:04 +0000 https://aviospace.org/?p=1547#comment-6398 […] With concerns already looming over the idea that it might just be China’s debt trap, the nation will find it very difficult to overcome the catastrophe that has been the morphing of this picturesque domestic airport of the nation to a rather flight-less international airport of the kind that places it amongst the ranks of the emptiest airport in the world. […]

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