AS a veteran airline executive, Peter Hill is accustomed to being telephoned at any time of the day or night. But he could never have foreseen the call that came at 4.20am one tropical July night in 2001.

Hill, Colombo-based chief executive of Sri Lankan Airlines, the national flag carrier, could not believe what he was hearing.

“One of my duty managers called to say the airport was under attack. He said, ‘The rebels have stormed the airport and they’re blowing up our aircraft. Listen.’”

Down the phone line came the crack and rattle of machinegun fire. A Tamil Tiger suicide squad had crawled through a storm drain and gone on the rampage, blowing up eight Sri Lankan air force jets and firing into the fuel tanks of the airline’s Airbus fleet. Three Airbuses were destroyed and three others badly damaged. Half the fleet had gone up in flames.

When Hill flew over the airport by helicopter a few hours later, a shoot-out was still going on inside the terminal building. Burnt-out wreckage was strewn across the concrete apron.

Yet bizarrely, the devastation was the answer to Hill’s prayers. Sri Lankan had bought several new aircraft, but the Tamil Tigers had intensified their campaign for an independent homeland. Bomb blasts and assassinations meant tourists cancelled in droves.

Then came the attack on Bandaranaike airport. “In hindsight, it got us out of a huge mess,” said Hill, 60, holding court in his skyscraper office overlooking the smoke and sprawl of Colombo.

“Here we were in a country that had all sorts of problems and we were haemorrhaging money.

“We weren’t bringing tourists in, we had all these aircraft and I was thinking, what the hell are we going to do? Suddenly we lose half the fleet and the insurance company says, ‘where do you want the money paid?’” Within two weeks, a cheque for $350m (£200m) was sitting on his desk.

Born in Somerset and brought up in London, Hill joined British Airways as a commercial trainee at 17.

He did a stint in Uganda under Idi Amin (“some of my staff were shot”) before joining Gulf Air in Bahrain in 1974. After five years, he moved to Dubai with what evolved into Emirates Airlines.

In 1996, after 18 years in Dubai, a mid-life crisis kicked in. Hill, then 50, returned to London and bought a pub, The Constitution on Regent’s Canal.

He had been responsible for all of Emirates’ commercial operations east of Dubai, including Australia, Hong Kong, India and Sri Lanka.

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