SriLankan Airlines whistleblower exposes massive financial leakages

• Alleges systemic cover-ups in fresh submissions to anti-corruption watchdogs

By Nishel Fernando 

Fresh evidence has emerged detailing the deep-rooted financial mismanagement and systemic governance failures at SriLankan Airlines. 

A public disclosure by a senior executive exposes millions of dollars in unjustifiable commission payouts and the alleged manipulation of the route profitability data. 

The disclosures, supported by highly confidential internal strategic papers placed into the public domain, paint a troubling picture of an institution crippled by what the whistleblower describes as institutional inertia and misaligned incentives that protect the status quo at the direct expense of the state-owned carrier’s commercial viability.

The allegations are spearheaded by Amitabh Anthonypillai, a senior airline strategist with over two decades of revenue generation experience within the national carrier, who most recently served as Country Manager for Thailand. 

Having faced total silence, following internal submissions to former Chairman Sarath Ganegoda and Audit Committee Chairman Vipula Gunatilleka, Anthonypillai formally escalated his grievances late last year to the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption and Presidential Special Investigation Committee. 

The correspondence dated December 2025 reveals that the anti-corruption commission initially forwarded the explosive dossier back to the airline for internal handling. The whistleblower condemned this move as a fundamental misinterpretation of the commission’s statutory mandate to impartially investigate the state-owned enterprises.

At the heart of the commercial dispute is a strategic paper titled ‘Aligning Strategy with Sustainability’, which meticulously details how the airline is actively haemorrhaging funds through its General Sales Agent network. The documents reveal that SriLankan Airlines continues to pay overriding commissions to regional agents for tickets purchased entirely organically through the airline’s own Internet Booking Engine. Despite the direct online channel generating US $ 144.31 million in the financial year ending March 2024, accounting for over 18 percent of total passenger revenue, the third-party agents continue to reap financial rewards for these direct sales. 

The documents highlight that these payouts contradict the global aviation norms, where no major airline compensates external agents for digital sales generated on their primary proprietary platforms.

The policy surrounding these direct-channel commissions has been highly volatile over the past decade, further raising questions about the motivations of the successive management teams. According to the strategic papers, commissions on internet bookings were slashed to a token one percent in 2013, under former Chief Executive Officer Kapila Chandrasena, to reflect the lack of effort required by the agents. By 2019, following a comprehensive restructuring exercise guided by Nyras Aviation Consultancy, these digital commissions were completely abolished. 

However, the internal documents assert that these lucrative payouts to the agents were controversially reinstated by the commercial management under the board chairmanship of Ashok Pathirage, resulting in severe and ongoing financial leakage. The financial projections within the dossier warn that without immediate policy reversal, the airline could be paying out upwards of US $ 7.7 million annually to the regional agents by the 2028 financial year for online sales they had no hand in generating.

Compounding this financial drain are ongoing commissions paid on interline flights ticketed by the partner airlines. The local agents receive revenue credits for segments flown by SriLankan Airlines, despite undertaking zero marketing or servicing efforts for those specific itineraries. 

The internal analysis estimates that this practice of paying overriding commissions on outward billings, which exceeded US $ 40.3 million in the last normal financial year, creates an entirely unnecessary expense of over US $ 1 million annually. Anthonypillai’s submission argues that these agents do not control fare filings or ticket issuances for partner carriers, making such compensatory structures a gross misallocation of state resources.

Beyond the immediate revenue leakages, the formal appeals lodged with the presidential investigative committee outline broader allegations of data manipulation and deliberate cost misallocations. The whistleblower points specifically to the accounting of the ACMI lease inductions across the 2023 to 2025 financial periods, alleging that manipulated internal reporting has intentionally distorted route profitability metrics. 

This, the submission argues, actively misleads key stakeholders regarding the true operational health of the network. The dossier ties these financial and operational irregularities to a toxic corporate culture, detailing systemic abuse of authority and discriminatory employment practices executed through the airline’s Human Resources division, which allegedly utilises retaliation and allowance irregularities to suppress the officers advocating for structural reform.