Sri Lankan Airlines, which has launched its new four-times- a week service from India to Colombo on Wednesday, is on a buoyant mood with growing passenger traffic to that island country close to peninsular India.

The airline is offering its brand new Airbus A320 and 321 Neo for its services into South India.

While the airlines has began its four times a week Visakpatnam-Colombo service last week, is all set to launch Coimbatore-Colombo from 16 July, taking it to 126 frequencies, which makes the airline the second largest full service carrier into India after Emirates and the largest in terms of destinations.

“Srilankan Airlines is going on a modest pace of expansion. We don’t want to fly to every destination, but we want to fly to destinations which make business sense to us,” said Siva Ramachandran, Chief Commercial Officer of the Airline addressing the press. “We are also focusing on a growing market which is China and rest of Far East, Gulf, SAARC, and into Bangladesh via Delhi. We are here to grow in India,” he said.

The airline which during 2003-2008 stopped its services to India due to ownership issues and commercial concerns is hoping for a healthy rebound. “Currently we have 11 wide bodied aircraft including Airbus 320 and 321s including Neos. We took delivery of them recently and another one by the end of the month. We will have 14 narrow bodies some of them will be replacing the older aeroplanes. We would consider wide bodied operations for Hyderabad if the volume increases,” the CCO said.

The airlines which currently enjoying a growth of traffic over 10% as additional capacity in India , led by Chennai , Mumbai and Delhi is expecting 25 % growth in the next few months. “Occupancy excluding the new frequencies is around 80% in all sectors,” he said.

Srilankan cricket icon Mahela Jayewardene was also present at the launch as a brand ambassador to the airline.

(Deccan Chronicle)