Sri Lanka has built an airport that nobody wants to use.
Speaking of white elephants, this must be the greatest of all. Sri Lanka’s last president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, spent $270mil on a brand spanking new international airport terminal. It was opened in 2013 and whilst it was designed to handle some 2 million passengers, it handles less than 5000 last year. Presently, only low cost carrier, flyDubai, operates from this airport with its limited flights to Dubai.
Look at the distances between Colombo and the two airports!
The country is still a very poor country with approximately 30% of its people still live below the poverty line so it beats me why the government of the day would have spent such money instead of feeding and educating its people.
It is a fact that the current Colombo Bandaranaike Airport is overly congested but I would rather fly through this airport than having to travel hundreds of kilometres to the new airport in the middle of nowhere in rural Sri Lanka!