Sri Lankan Airlines eyes south Indian destinations

Tiruchirapalli, May 23 (UNI) Sri Lankan Airlines plans to introduce its services in south India to cities like Madurai, Coimbatore and Mangalore.

Disclosing this to newspersons here today, Manager (Tamil Nadu and Karnataka), Sri Lankan Airlines Mohan de S Meegolle said though the exact date could not be divulged now, the three cities were in the road map of the airlines.

Currently, the Sri Lankan Airlines operates 95 services in a week to ten destinations in India and will soon enhance its services to 100.

Maximum number of services were offered to Kerala with 32 flights a week, comprising of 13 services to Thiruvananthapuram, 11 to Kochi and eight flights to Kozhikode, he said.

After Kerala, the airlines was operating maximum number of services to Tamil Nadu, with 15 services to Chennai and ten flights a week to and fro Tiruchirapalli.

Besides, the Airlines operated more than seven flights a week to Mumbai, three to Goa and seven flights each daily to Bangalore, Hyderabad and Delhi, he added.

Mr Meegolle said over 92 per cent of the passengers carried by the airlines were tourists and the country's biggest tourist influx was from India.

Sri Lankan nationals were the third largest tourists to visit India he said and added the airlines' top priority was to strengthen its services rather than adding new destinations. The airlines had plans to enhance the flight frequencies or introduce wider bodied aircraft to Indian destinations to increase the passenger traffic.

Only after this, the newer destinations across India would be added, he said.

To a query, he said the net revenue for Tamil Nadu and Karnataka was close to Rs two billion per annum.

The airlines management was in a process of holding discussions with Tamil Nadu government and Tamil Nadu Tourism Development Corporation to evolve special packages that would enable Sri Lankan tourists to visit special tourists spots in the state, he said.

An MoU was signed with Kerala tourism authorities earlier and was agreement with Tamil Nadu authorities will be followed by similar negotiations with Tourism Board of Karnataka.

He said currently the airlines was offering an attractive package of Rs 9,999 per passenger, which would cover two nights and three days stay free of cost in a star hotel accommodation in Colombo and will be valid only till May 31 this year.

This package proved to be very successful in the market and the next announcement of similar package would come out in the months of September-October and November this year, he said.

UNI