The attack left 18 people dead

Three Sri Lankan Airline planes were damaged and three others were completely destroyed in a fierce gunbattle at the country's only international airport between the military and suicide rebel attackers.

From now on, passengers to Europe will have to change on to an Emirates plane in Dubai and the Far Eastern market will be served through Singapore while the airline tries to work out a weekly schedule for flights.

Underwriters from Lloyds Insurance are in Sri Lanka inspecting the damage, but the airline says they are fully covered according to international standards and they expect to recover the losses incurred.

These will run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

Peak season

On Friday, experts from Airbus are expected to arrive in the country to assess how long it will take to repair the three damaged planes.

Some 4,000 tourists were stranded

Sri Lankan Airlines says at least six flights have now departed for Europe and other airlines have been helpful in carrying their passengers so as to ease the backlog.

Four thousand tourists were stranded in Colombo in the initial aftermath of the attack.

Now the airline says everyone at least has a seat and a date on which they can expect to travel out of the country.

This is the peak season for inbound traffic from Europe and London is the most important market for Sri Lankan Airlines, which says its 10 flights a week to the UK are normally chock-a-block at this time.

The airline estimates 60% of its passengers are tourists.

Hotels and tour operators in Sri Lanka say they have had about 15% cancellations as a result of the attack on the airport in which many tourists were caught up

But they say so far it hasn't been as bad as they expected.