SriLankan Airlines Reviews

The good news is that ever seat gets a seatback TV Screen on SriLankan airlines. The bad news is that they don't always – indeed often - work.

SriLankan Airlines Overhead monitors are all you get on the A320

When it works, the system is OK. It uses the old Emirates IFE system, with films on a loop: you have to wait for every film to stop before the system restarts again: about 2 hours, but if there is a long film it could be three and a half. There are only six channels of films (movies), but with three taken up by a local film, and ancient films from the 60s, you can only assume that three are western, and these are what are termed 'recurrent': they are films that have already been out on DVD for some considerable time.

There are five channels of TV programmes, but again these are pretty useless comedies you may never have heard of from the US. Finally, there is CTV, a loop of cartoons for children with very very old versions of Tom and Jerry. And that's it – unless you fancy listening to SriLankan pop on the Radio channels. There are also some very basic 1980s style video games.

On a very few planes – one at the moment, but soon increasing to three - SriLankan airlines are retrofitting AVOD. It is a full AVOD (Audio Video on Demand) system, which means you can select what you want and when you want to play it. The four coloured buttons on the remote are play, stop, fast forward, and rewind.

SriLankan Airlines Basic 1980s style video games.

There is laptop power - of a kind. It comes in the form of a USB port below most screens, which you can use to charge your device. It is also a full USB port, into which you can plug cameras and iPods, and view films on the larger seatback screen.

SriLankan Airlines Basic welcome screen

A major problem is that quite often one or more of the looped TV channels has a bad tape – and won't play. Or worse, your screen is broken and shows nothing for the whole flight. The general advice is always be prepared – and take a good book.

Headphones in economy are of the single overhead band type, with a single 3.5mm jack plug. This plug can cause problems, and on older planes tends to work loose. Audio is in Mono, and reproduction isn't that good. However headphones in Business are slightly better – but not much.

SriLankan Airlines Inflight Magazine - Serendip

SriLankan Airlines of course has it's own inflight magazine "Serendip" which is, quite frankly, a bit rubbish.

SriLankan Airlines Serendip - Inflight magazine

Pure marketing in the style of the journalism, there is little attempt to cover subjects in detail, and instead its rather like reading a badly written travelogue, full of gushing misspelling.

SriLankan Airlines onDemand - Inflight magazine

Fancy reading that 'your head will explode with joy at the sheer treasures you will encounter on the glamour of the beaches in Sri Lanka.' I kid you not.

There are two other magazines. Ondemand shows the inflight films, while Treasures is the duty free mag.