Sri Lankan Airlines will become the foreign airline with the largest network in India, one of the world’s largest travel markets, expanding to cover 11 cities with the addition of four more destinations in October/November 2016 – Kolkata, Madurai, Bodh Gaya and Varanasi.
With this move, Sri Lankan will surpass 100 flights per week to India, when it adds 19 more flights. This has made Sri Lankan the 5th largest foreign carrier operating to India in terms of both number of flights and total seat capacity, with 107 flights per week.
The expansion is a clear signal of the recent strategic shift by Sri Lanka’s national carrier to heighten its focus on its network in South Asia, the Middle East and the Far East. The airline has been rapidly modernizing its all-Airbus fleet with the addition of brand new wide body A330-300 aircraft and is to take delivery of five ultramodern narrow body A320neo and A321neo aircraft in 2017.
A total of 278,017 Indians visited Sri Lanka in 2015, making India the largest tourism generating market to Sri Lanka. That number has increased by 14% year on year in the first nine months of 2016 with 252,165 Indian visitors, according to statistics of the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority.
-Echo of India
-Agencies
