SriLankan Airlines (UL, Colombo International) says that embarking on a five-year strategic plan to stabilise the flag carrier to help it become a self-sustaining entity has helped boost passenger numbers and revenues since it was announced earlier in the year.

It said in a September 24 media statement that the strategy, which aims to bolster its operations and finances, has led to improvements across “multiple areas” in the past 12 months.

According to the statement, the airline’s on-time performance has risen to 74% in 2025, up from 69% last year, “despite global engines and spare parts shortages”. At the same time, it said that revised timings and expanded services had helped boost passenger revenue and numbers by 10% and 22%, respectively, in the first five months of the 2025/26 financial year.

Officials said earlier in September that the airline was likely to be restructured as the state pushes ahead with plans to liquidate other public enterprises that have failed. That followed an admission in June that the airline was losing money on 31 of the 45 routes it operated.

The country's new administration first announced the five-year plan in February 2025, saying at the time it planned to grow the fleet to 52 aircraft and double the airline’s revenues from below USD1 billion to more than USD2 billion.

Meanwhile, the carrier said it had returned two of its grounded aircraft to service during the year, although the statement did not give further details. According to ch-aviation fleets data, just one of the airline’s 23 aircraft, A321-200N 4R-ANE (msn 7891), is currently parked, an improvement on April 2024 when nine units were grounded.

The fleet currently comprises seven A320-200s, two A320-200Ns, four A321-200Ns, three A330-200s, and seven A330-300s. In June 2025, it took delivery of its first new widebody in seven years, with one more of the variant still to join the fleet. SriLankan also has four A350-900s on order from Airbus, part of a bigger deal that has caused some tension between carrier and manufacturer.