Sri Lanka’s second international airport, Mattala International Airport, has been left without a single scheduled flight this year after its remaining carrier Flydubai suspended flights to the facility on June 8, said a report.

The airport, located 250km away from the capital Colombo, was built at a cost of over $200 million, financed mostly by loans from China, said a report in Gulf News.

Spread over 12,000-sq-m with 12 check-in counters and two gates, it is capable of hosting more than a million passengers each year. However, the airport only received some 35,000 passengers in 2017, rendering it virtually "empty".

Even Sri Lanka’s national carrier Sri Lankan Airlines stopped flying to Mattala in 2015 saying the move saved them $18 million annually.

Mattala will however remain an emergency alternate landing location for flights heading into Colombo International, the report said.