Sri Lanka signs up as the first country in EHang's global fast-track certification programme

On 19 August 2026, the Civil Aviation Authority of Sri Lanka (CAASL) adopted a set of proposals from the Chinese manufacturer EHang Intelligent under its Global Fast Track Programme, making Sri Lanka the first country to formally take up the scheme. The target, according to CAASL Director General and CEO Capt. Daminda Rambukwella, is to stand up the country's first eVTOL regulatory sandbox within four months — putting a working trial in the air by roughly mid-December 2026, assuming the assessments go to plan.

The pitch behind EHang's programme is straightforward: instead of a national regulator spending years writing an entirely new rulebook for pilotless, passenger-carrying aircraft, it validates an airframe that has already been certified elsewhere. EHang's EH216-S — a two-seat, 16-motor, fully pilotless electric aircraft — holds what the company describes as the world's first type certificate issued for a pilotless, human-carrying eVTOL, awarded by China's Civil Aviation Administration (CAAC), along with a production certificate and standard airworthiness certificate. The Global Fast Track Programme packages that paperwork as a four-phase process: align regulatory requirements with the host country, build the operational sandbox and supporting infrastructure, run validation flights under agreed safety standards, and transition to commercial passenger service.

"By enabling civil aviation authorities to validate an already-certified aircraft rather than start from scratch, the Fast Track Programme is expected to turn regulatory exploration into actionable progress effectively." Hu Huazhi, Founder, Chairman & CEO, EHang

Sri Lanka's side of the agreement runs through the Ministry of Ports and Civil Aviation together with CAASL, with Minister Anura Karunathilaka framing the move around tourism and emergency-response applications. The proposed hub is Port City, the reclaimed financial district being built out on Colombo's waterfront, with EHang supplying the aircraft, operating systems, technical support and training. The routes under discussion are the ones you would expect of a first sandbox built for visibility rather than volume: scenic flights over Sigiriya and Pidurangala, an airport shuttle linking Katunayake International Airport to central Colombo, and — further out — unmanned cargo runs supporting maritime logistics around the port.

Capt. Rambukwella was careful, in the same announcement, to separate the target date from a guarantee. The sandbox is a controlled environment for assessing eVTOL operations, he said, not an approval for a nationwide commercial service — the four-month figure "remains subject to the successful completion of the required regulatory, technical, operational and safety assessments and approvals." Technical working sessions between CAASL and EHang are reported to cover regulatory requirements, aircraft specifications, infrastructure and airspace considerations, maintenance arrangements, personnel requirements and the operational framework itself — the unglamorous groundwork that determines whether a four-month target survives contact with reality.

Why Sri Lanka, and why now? Part of the answer sits outside Colombo entirely. EHang's largest potential market, the United States, effectively closed to it on 3 September 2026, when a 100% ad valorem duty on imported unmanned aircraft over 25kg took hold — squarely inside the EH216-S's weight class. EHang says it is in active regulatory discussions with several other governments it has not named, and frames its strategy as exporting certification itself rather than just the aircraft. A small, aviation-friendly market willing to move first gives the company a working regulatory template it can point to elsewhere in Asia, the Gulf and Africa; for Sri Lanka, it offers a route to a visible, photogenic piece of advanced infrastructure without the multi-year rulemaking bill that the United States and Europe are still paying.

Whether a four-month sandbox becomes a lasting service is the open question the rest of this programme will answer. CAASL's own caution about the timeline is worth taking at face value: regulatory sandboxes in aviation have a habit of running long, and Sri Lanka has no prior experience certifying autonomous passenger aircraft of any kind. What is already true is narrower but real — a national regulator has signed a document committing it to try, and a company has committed aircraft, systems and training to back it. evtol.lk will track the sandbox's technical milestones as CAASL publishes them.