Air Bridge to Jaffna

Propliners Guest Column by Capt. G.A. Fernando

Evacuation flights and a near miss

This story dates from August 1977. It was 13 months before Sri Lanka’s ‘long war’ effectively began with the country’s first experience of aviation terrorism, when a bomb destroyed one of Air Ceylon’s two Hawker Siddeley (Avro) HS 748 aircraft. A landmark election held just a few weeks earlier in July 1977 had propelled the right-wing United National Party to power with a huge majority, reflecting the electorate’s dissatisfaction with seven years of socialist rule. The left-wing parties were almost wiped out and the parliamentary opposition was composed largely of ethnic-Tamil parties who supported the creation of a federal state, if not outright separatism.

Almost as soon as the new government came to power, race riots broke out. Mobs of majority Sinhalese attacked the minority Tamil population who resided in the southern parts of the country, particularly the capital Colombo. This prompted a large number of displaced Tamil citizens to seek refuge in the northern city of Jaffna.

Gihan A. Fernando, universally known as ‘GAF’, who would go on to be a Captain on the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, Boeing 747 and Airbus 340 among other types in a long airline career, was a First Officer with Air Ceylon (AE) at the time of this narrative. ‘GAF’ was flying Air Ceylon’s Avro 748 airplanes, and he recalls the unprecedented ‘air bridge’ to Jaffna in his own words: