SriLankan Airlines has been focusing on the Indian market to strategically expand its operations in the country. During the past years, SriLankan Airlines has established a strong market presence and lasting relationship with the travel partners and industry stakeholders of India. India has been a vital partner in SriLankan Airlines’ route network from the early days. The Airlines holds a wide coverage in India, and India is one of Sri Lanka’s main source of inbound tourist traffic. Today, it directly operates to 14 Indian destinations with a total of 135 flights a week.
According to Chinthaka Weerasinghe, country manager, Srilankan Airlines, “We are keen on increasing the destinations and flight frequencies in India as the demand is constantly on the rise. With the new development ventures, we anticipate significant passenger numbers from our key contributors to inbound tourism traffic- India, China, Europe, Australia, and Maldives. We have already introduced three new destinations in 2017 namely Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad and Coimbatore which have commenced operations with 4 frequencies a week.”
Adding to this, he said, “The Indian government authorities and related state institutions have always been a firm supporter to all SriLankan Airlines and Sri Lanka Tourism projects. We hope that this bond between the two nations will be strengthened through the evolving business structure of Srilankan Airlines.”
Srilankan Airlines is focused on expanding the operation and enhancing the services in India. The Delhi- Northern India and Bombay-Western India flights were increased to 11 frequencies from seven, in July 2017. Subsequently, due to the high market demand, they intend to further increase these frequencies to 13 flights per week to Delhi- Northern India and 14 flights a week to Bombay-Western India by 2018.
SriLankan Airlines Commercial Planning is constantly studying the dynamic market conditions and passenger demand fluctuations in order to capture and implement potentially lucrative Indian routes/destinations since SriLankan holds a large market share. However, aligning with their corporate objective of being the preferred Airline in Asia, its pivotal objective is to optimize the current route network and attain the leadership as a regional carrier.