Sri Lankan Airlines has suspended a captain who failed a breathalyser test just before he was due to fly 274 passengers and crew from Frankfurt to Colombo, the airline said Sunday. "Upon receiving the results (of the test) Sri Lankan Airlines took immediate steps to suspend the services of the said captain and took alternative measures to operate the flight to Colombo," the airline said. An airline source said Flight UL554 was held up at Frankfurt airport for more than 15 hours Friday as staff scrambled to find another captain for the Airbus A330. The crew raised the alarm after noticing that the captain was visibly drunk, the source said. The airline said an internal investigation was underway into the incident and it would cooperate with any probe by German authorities. <br/>
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Sri Lanka has extended the deadline for expressions of interest in SriLankan Airlines and its low-cost subsidiary, Mihin Lanka, until Aug 31. The Sri Lankan govt is looking to find a strategic investor for the “reorientation” of the two airlines. The exact stake up for sale is unclear, although it has been suggested it could be around 40%. National Savings Bank subsidiary NSB Fund Management, which is managing the process, formally announced the privatisation July 6 and originally set a deadline of Aug 24. SriLankan Airlines has been facing increased competition, especially from Gulf carriers, and earlier this year the govt said it was considering an equity buy-in from another airline and possible aircraft order cancellations to stem ongoing losses. This was followed by some network cuts. <br/>
Air crash investigators are planning to dump replica Boeing 777 wing flaps fitted with satellite trackers into the Indian Ocean in an effort to discover the wreckage of the missing MH370 jet. In July 2015, a flaperon washed ashore on a beach in Saint-Andre, Reunion Island. Now experts want to "reverse" the flaperon's journey in an effort to determine the most likely crash site. So far, experts have searched approximately 46,000 square miles of the ocean floor during a 2-year operation but have failed to find the missing jet. A new search would require a new funding commitment, with Malaysia, Australia and China agreeing in July that the NZ$160m search will be suspended once the current stretch of ocean southwest of Australia is exhausted unless new evidence emerges that would pinpoint a specific location of the aircraft. <br/>
American Airlines received more than its fair share of negative publicity last week, after the latest data from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics labelled it America’s tardiest airline. Figures show that the airline had the worst on-time performance rate among 12 American carriers in June, with just 72.4% of flights keeping to schedule. While the figures reflect badly on the carrier, a spokesperson pointed out that isolated weather incidents have had a distortive effect this summer. The June statistics also pre-date a “major system-wide network outage” that affected Delta operations this month, resulting in thousands of flight cancellations and delays. That incident should easily send the Delta to the bottom of the on-time performance ranking for August. <br/>