CMB Colombo

How deep the CMB board really is

The table above says where a courier can fly from CMB. This reads the same 45 destinations back for the questions a dispatcher asks second: how much of the board rests on one airline, how much of it runs less than daily, whether the return leg is as thick as the outbound, what the clock here does to a Gulf working day and which of the destinations shut at night, all of it computed on 2026-09-07 from AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics.

• 29of the 45 destinations are flown by one airline
• 18destinations run less than once a day
• 8destinations have four or more departures a day
• 71.1%of the destinations name SriLankan Airlines, the largest presence here

Who holds the departures at CMB

29 airlines appear on the CMB board and they do not hold it evenly. SriLankan Airlines is on 32 of the 45 destinations, 71.1 per cent of them, and on 18 of those it is the only airline flying the sector. The destinations it appears on carry 76.8 of the 93.2 departures a day this airport files, though other airlines fly some of the same sectors, so read that as reach rather than as a share of the aircraft.

The next largest presence is FitsAir on 4 destinations. 21 of the 29 airlines at CMB appear on a single destination each, which is the long tail every airport carries, and none of it is a rebooking option when the sector you need is the one that fell over.

An airport held this tightly is quick to book and slow to recover: with 32 of the 45 destinations on one airline, the second aircraft on a CMB sector is usually another SriLankan Airlines aircraft, and when there is not one the desk is looking at another airport rather than another airline. That is why the alternate airports listed above matter more at CMB than the destination count does.

How much of the CMB board is daily

Of the 45 destinations, 27 are flown at least once a day and 18 are not, though none of them drops to once a week or less. The median destination on the CMB board is flown about once a day.

An average of 0.29 flights a day is the schedule statistic, and it is worth translating it before anything is promised to anybody: CMB to Seoul (ICN) is 2 a week, so a missed departure there is not a delay of hours, it is the next slot.

The five busiest destinations carry 37.6 of the 93.2 departures a day, 40.3 per cent of the whole board. The other 40 destinations are spread widely enough that a courier who misses the first departure at CMB usually has somewhere else to look on the same board.

Destination	Country	The only airline on it	Flights a week	km	Routing
Chongqing CKG	China	Chongqing Airlines	2	3,754	the pair page
Gan GAN	Maldives	SriLankan Airlines	2	1,151	plan this
Mahe Island SEZ	Seychelles	Air Seychelles	2	3,008	plan this
Seoul ICN	South Korea	SriLankan Airlines	2	5,768	the pair page
Chengdu TFU	China	Air China	3	3,629	the pair page
Ahmedabad AMD	India	FitsAir	4	1,930	plan this
Frankfurt-am-Main FRA	Germany	SriLankan Airlines	4	8,068	the pair page
Guangzhou CAN	China	SriLankan Airlines	4	3,995	the pair page
Karachi KHI	Pakistan	SriLankan Airlines	4	2,390	plan this
Kathmandu KTM	Nepal	SriLankan Airlines	4	2,353	plan this

The ten destinations out of CMB where one airline holds the sector and files fewer than seven departures a week, with the weekly figure taken as the average daily rate multiplied by seven rather than as a fixed timetable. 7 further destinations sit in the same position and are listed in the board above.

The way back from CMB

The desk holds the return direction for 44 of the 45 destinations, and a courier plans the way back on those figures rather than on the outbound. On two of them the return into CMB runs thinner than the outbound by more than a quarter. The widest gaps are Kuwait City (KWI) at 3.7 out a day against 0.86 back and Riyadh (RUH) at 1.1 out a day against 0.57 back.

It runs the other way as well: Mumbai (BOM) files 3.6 a day back into CMB against 1.5 outbound, which is the shape that strands a courier at this end rather than at the far end.

The clock at CMB

CMB keeps Asia/Colombo time, one and a half hours ahead of Dubai all year.

When it is 09:00 on a Dubai working morning it is 10:30 at CMB, so a nine to six day at each end overlaps for seven and a half hours. That is wide enough to settle a customs question at CMB and still make a departure the same day.

The night at CMB

5 of the destinations from here carry a documented night restriction of their own, which is a departure time question at this end rather than an arrival problem at the other.

Into London (LHR) the door shuts at 23:30 local, so the last departure from CMB that lands inside it leaves around 17:00, on a modelled block of 11h 00m. Into Frankfurt-am-Main (FRA) the door shuts at 23:00 local, so the last departure from CMB that lands inside it leaves around 16:17, on a modelled block of 10h 13m. Into Paris (CDG) the door shuts at 00:00 local, so the last departure from CMB that lands inside it leaves around 16:47, on a modelled block of 10h 43m. Those three departure times out of CMB are worked backwards from the published window with the block time model this site uses everywhere, 720 to 880 km an hour by sector length with thirty minutes on the ground, so they are arithmetic rather than a timetable and the desk checks the published departure before it promises the landing.

Where CMB turns up on the rest of this site

CMB carries two other pages on this site as well: the Sri Lanka country desk, which sets out the customs practice, the working week and the road legs behind this airport and the CMB transit page for the connecting case, where a courier changes aircraft here rather than starting or finishing.

The site publishes 31 airport pair pages that start or end at CMB, each with the distance, the block time, the carriers on the sector and a door to door clock. The busiest are Colombo to Malé (MLE), Colombo to Chennai (MAA) and Colombo to Doha (DOH).

Four of the 346 published hand carry lanes run through this airport: Abu Dhabi to Colombo, Colombo to Sharjah and Dubai to Colombo. A lane page is the commercial version of the board above, with the customs, the ground legs and the price at CMB written out.

Three courier postings name CMB as the airport a courier here flies from: Colombo, Negombo and Kandy.

To price a movement rather than read the board, the route calculator opens with CMB already set as the origin, and it works out the flying time, the distance and the delivery hour for any of the 45 destinations above.