The Duty Officer at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA), Katunayake said that three planes en route to BIA were diverted to Mattala Airport due to the adverse weather.
He said that due to the heavy rains and lightning occured around the BIA last night (04) and this morning, these planes were diverted to Mattala.
It was reported that there were 297 passengers on one of the planes that arrived from Melbourne, Australia.
The other two planes were from Malé, Maldives and Dammam.
