---
title: "CMB — Bandaranaike International Colombo Airport, Colombo · Orbit"
description: "Bandaranaike International Colombo Airport (CMB/VCBI) serves Colombo, Sri Lanka. Opened 1944, 10 million passengers in 2019, 28 km from Colombo."
url: https://orbitflights.app/airports/cmb
---

Colombo · Sri Lanka · Asia

# CMB — Bandaranaike International Colombo

Bandaranaike International Colombo Airport serves Colombo, Sri Lanka, 28 km from the city centre, and sits at 7.2°N, 79.9°E. This site carries 1 route touching it, with the great circle distance for each.

**IATA**
CMB
the code on your bag tag

**ICAO**
VCBI
used by air traffic control

**Opened**
1944
per Wikidata

**Passengers**
10M
in 2019

## History & name

Opened in 1944, Bandaranaike International Colombo Airport sits 28 km from Colombo. It recorded 10 million passengers in 2019 and has one runway of 3,350 m, at an elevation of 30 feet.

Read more: [Wikipedia ↗](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandaranaike%5FInternational%5FAirport) · [Wikidata ↗](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60900)

## At a glance

**Full name**
Bandaranaike International Colombo Airport

**Serves**
Colombo, Sri Lanka

**City centre**
28 km from Colombo

**Opened**
1944

**Passengers**
10 million in 2019

**Runways**
1 runway, 3,350 m

**Elevation**
30 ft (9 m)

**Map**
[Open in Google Maps ↗](https://www.google.com/maps/search/?api=1&query=7.18080,79.88410)

**Website**
[airport.lk ↗](http://www.airport.lk/)

## Where it sits

7.2°N, 79.9°E puts CMB in the northern hemisphere, 798 km from the equator and 9,209 km from the North pole.

Of the 661 airports on this site it is the **483rd** most northerly, which makes it the 179th most southerly.

## Straight through the middle

Straight down through the centre of the Earth comes out at 7.2°S, 100.1°W. The nearest airport on this site to that point is Seymour Galapagos Ecological (GPS) in Ecuador, still 1,324 km away — most of the planet's antipodes are ocean.

## What’s near it

The closest other airport on this site is **Mattala Rajapaksa** (HRI), 169 km away in a straight line. Nothing else on this site is within 100 km.

## Distances from CMB

Great circle distance and an estimated time in the air.

| To                                                   |     | Distance | Estimated |
| ---------------------------------------------------- | --- | -------- | --------- |
| [London](https://orbitflights.app/routes/lhr-to-cmb) | LHR | 8,715 km | 11h 20m   |

[Distance from CMB to any airport →](https://orbitflights.app/distance?from=CMB&to=LHR) [Map a trip from CMB →](https://orbitflights.app/tools/flight-route-map?r=CMB-LHR)

## Where these facts come from

The profile is looked up, not written from memory: type, runways, elevation and the official website from [OurAirports](https://ourairports.com/data/) (public domain); opening year, namesake, operator and passenger count from [Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/) (CC0); the city centre from [GeoNames](https://www.geonames.org/) (CC BY 4.0). Where a source has nothing, the line is left out. Distances, neighbours and the antipode are computed from the coordinates.

What you won’t find: terminal maps, airline lists, shops or live departures. Orbit is a logbook, not a flight tracker, and a page that guessed at those would be worse than one that leaves them out.

[Measure CMB to anywhere →](https://orbitflights.app/distance)

## Flown through CMB?

Orbit knows all 8,801 airports offline and works out the distance the moment you enter two codes.

[Download now](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.qwertybit.orbit)

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Markdown copy of https://orbitflights.app/airports/cmb for language models and agents. Site index: https://orbitflights.app/llms.txt