SriLankan Airlines is planning to support the country’s rapidly-growing tourism industry with a planned increase in worldwide flights, this includes additional capacity to Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Rome, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, Karachi and many cities in India, the airline said on Friday.
The national carrier’s aircraft fleet will be significantly expanded to cater to these operations, and its existing fleet modernised. One wide-bodied Airbus A330-200 arrived in July, and two A320’s are likely during late 2010, it said. Meanwhile Tourist arrivals in July rose by 50 % to 63,339 from the July 2009 month while total arrivals for the year to July 2010 rose 48.7% to 341,991 in the same, 7-month comparative period in 2009.
SriLankan’s Head of Worldwide Sales Mohamed Fazeel said: “SriLankan’s long term plan for the next five years is being drawn up to support Sri Lanka’s tourism industry in particular and our nation’s economic growth in general. Our plan envisages almost a doubling of our fleet, and greatly increased capacity to most of our existing destinations.”
“We are also continuously monitoring the marketing opportunities in a number of cities we currently do not operate to at present and will be constantly evaluating the opportunities to commence direct services to these cities,” he said. |
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