Russia’s largest charter airline —  Azur Air and the flag carrier of France —  Air France, will resume flights to Sri Lanka starting from this week, according to Sri Lanka’s Tourism Ministry. 

Azur Air will commence flights to Sri Lanka from tomorrow (November 03) while Air France is scheduled to resume flights from Friday (November 04).

Meanwhile in a twitter message today, Tourism Minister Harin Fernando announced that Switzerland’s national airline, Swiss International Air Lines, is now staring operations in Sri Lanka once again with weekly flights starting from November 10 to May2023. 

He said this will further strengthen the European arrivals for the season.

Russian airlines have not been flying to Sri Lanka since early June, when an A330-300 operated by Aeroflot was briefly detained due to a dispute with lessor AerCap‘s special purpose vehicle Celestial Aviation Trading Limited. 

Even though the court quickly released the aircraft and the Sri Lankan government guaranteed that no further seizures would be made in the country, Russian airlines had been reluctant to return to the island.

However, Russia’s flagship carrier Aeroflot last month resumed flights between Moscow and Colombo after a lapse of 4 months.

Meanwhile Minister Fernando had tweeted recently that Air France and KLM Airlines will resume flights to Colombo, and the said airlines will operate four flights a week to Sri Lanka.

Delighted to have @swissairlines staring operations in Sri Lanka again with weekly flights starting from 10 Nov to 2023 May. This will further strengthen the European arrivals for the season. pic.twitter.com/JXBsEL35Cv

— Harin Fernando (@fernandoharin) November 2, 2022