Ports and aviation minister Chamal Rajapaksa has asked the airports and aviation services authority to make arrangements to shift the planned second international airport to a new site in Mattala in the same district.
Plans to build the airport in Weerawila drew protests from farmers as well as environmentalists who said it was too close to the Bundala bird sanctuary on the south coast.
The government had already laid the foundation stone for the new airport even before the environmental feasibility study was completed.
The ports and aviation ministry said the decision to shift the site was taken after Rajapaksa met farmers in the area recently.
Building the airport at the original site in Weerawila would have prevented cultivation in paddy fields and other lands in area, it said.
Farmers groups in the area had long protested against plans for the airport, it said.
Sri Lanka has only one international airport at present and needs a second one under international air safety rules so flights can be diverted in case of emergency.
Aircraft now have to carry extra fuel to divert to airports in neighbouring India or the Maldives if Sri Lanka's only international airport in Katunayake, north of Colombo, is closed in an emergency.
The Katunayake airport was closed briefly last year and flights diverted after Tamil Tiger rebels used a light aircraft to bomb a nearby airbase.
The government chose a site in the south of the island for the second international airport as the region is in the dry zone, and not affected by the same weather patterns as the existing airport.
The proposed new airport has attracted interest from India's Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL).
CIAL earlier this year had talks with Rajapaksa, who is the brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose political constituency is Hambantota.
All the citizen watching cricket and does not understand politiens drama. When we will wake up.....
Where are the dynamic duo of CJ and Vasu now ? Someone should quantify the wastage of the weerawila fiasco, im sure it runs into hundrends of millions. This was as bad as CBK's presidential palance drama in Sri J'pure/battaramulla !
I wish our country had the priviledge of having sensible gentlemen such as Mr. Samarajiva in positions where he could make a real difference ! Why try and reinvent the wheel !
Many decried the successful LTTE raid on the Katunayake International Airport as a despicable terrorist attack. The trouble was that it did not meet the criteria of a terrorist attack: it hit a military target.
The destruction of half the SriLankan fleet and the driving up of war risk insurance, etc. were collateral benefits the LTTE gained by attacking the principal military airfield in the country.
It has been five years since that nadir of the war was traversed. One would think that some action would have been taken to separate the military airfield from the only international airport this export- and tourism-dependent country has.
But, no. We are building the alternative airport from scratch as far away from population agglomerations and the theater of war as possible, in the President's home district in the Deep South.
There is a working airfield in Hingurakgoda, which meets the key criteria one looks for in an alternative airport: it enjoys drier weather than Katunayake; it is in a different weather zone. And it is most likely that the runway can be upgraded to handle Airbuses and Boeings once in a blue moon (which is all that is needed from an alternative airport) much faster than Weerawila can be constructed from scratch.
It also has certain other advantages that should not be spoken of too loudly. Hingurakgoda is the location that has long been discussed as the logical headquarters of the Sri Lanka Air Force.
And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that it would be a little more effective for running sorties over Kili than Katunayake. And if the airport gets done sooner, the shorter will be the Kfir holiday for Soosai.
Why? Why do the economic and strategic not converge, like it does everywhere else, to give us decent infrastructure in this blessed island?
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