International flights to Jaffna International Airport will begin from November 01.

Jaffna - the third international airport in Sri Lanka - was declared open by President Maithripala Sirisne and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe this morning.

The Jaffna International AIrport, located in Palali, will handle international flights, especially to South Indian cities, under the first stage.

The first 950 metres of the runway was repaved to accommodate Bombardier C100 planes with a seating capacity of 72 recently. The second stage wil see the extension of the the current runway by another 1.5 km.

Under the third stage of development, the runway is to be expanded to 2.3 km, enabling the airport to handle large passenger planes such as the Airbus AL- 320 and AL-321.