Sri Lankan plans 100 weekly flights to India from Oct

Get ready for a Sri Lankan century in India from October this year. The airline will increase its weekly operations to 100 flights from October 28 this year, Mr. Peter Hill, CEO, told Business Line.

“The combination of launch of services to Coimbatore and the decision to go back to our original summer schedule operations now that Colombo airport is open 24 hours will see us touch 100 weekly flights to India,” Mr. Hill said.

Currently, the airline operates 95 weekly flights to 10 Indian cities, including daily flights to Delhi and Mumbai.

Lufthansa, which operates 45 weekly flights to India, is the closest an international airline comes to Sri Lankan operations.

Taking advantage of the open skies agreement reached between India and Sri Lanka in October 2003, Sri Lankan has progressively increased its operations from 45 weekly flights.

(The agreement allows daily flights between Colombo and Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Kolkata and unlimited flights to 18 other tourist destinations.)

In comparison, four carriers from India – Jet Airways, Indian, Jet Lite and Air India Express – collectively operate about 28 flights a week from India to Sri Lanka.

“After the agreement, we launched flights not only to traditional cities generating traffic like Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai but also selected a range of destinations, particularly in South India,” Mr. Hill said.

Meanwhile, Sri Lankan is examining the possibility of launching flights from Colombo to Kathmandu that would also pick up traffic from India.

“The Nepalese Government has given us permission to pick up traffic between Delhi and Kathmandu. The airline is yet to decide whether it would launch a new flight to Kathmandu or extend the daily service to Delhi onwards to Nepal,” Mr. Hill said.