CAA spotlights Jaffna airport’s potential
Palaly’s commercial viability has seen its location to be a key factor in attracting tourists from India’s Southern sector and a good option for Northern citizens that want to fly out.
With destinations like Trivandrum, Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi showing an increasing trend in passenger movement the market has attracted Sri Lanka’s highest number of passengers for the period 2013-2018, a presentation by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in Sri Lanka stated to travel agents and tour operators.
Last year Chennai had recorded a total passenger movement of 36 per cent from the passenger movement from India to Colombo with Mumbai following at 13 per cent.
The South Indian sectors that are considered to be potential catchment areas are Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.
Moreover, the number of Indians that travel to Sri Lanka has kept increasing with last year recording a figure of 424, 887 with the majority of Indians visiting Sri Lanka on vacation and to visit friends and relations, the presentation stated.
Also as per the Palaly aerodrome capacity with a runway length of 2300 metres and demographic factors, the CAA noted that it seems viable to operate frequent flights to airports in Chennai, Trichy, Trivandrum, Cochin, Coimbatore, Calicut, Kempegowda, Madurai, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Varnasi and Kolkata.
Another interesting highlight in the presentation was that during the period of 2012-2018 there had been a total of 232,105 passports issued in the north and the growth rates of these issuances have been 8 per cent in 2018 and 3 per cent in 2017.
Around 4.42 per cent of international tourists visit Jaffna when on vacation in Sri Lanka and in addition there have been an increasing number of tourists visiting Casurina Beach at Karainagar.