SriLankan Airlines brought down for the first time in over a decade the A320-200 aircraft from Toulouse France as part of its expansion plans and increasing its fleet to16. The last brand new aircraft arrived in Colombo in 2000.
With targets set to increase its fleet to 30 by 2013, the purchase of the new aircraft is the first of three more new aircraft of this model to be added to the national carrier, the airline’s Chairman Nishantha Wickremesinghe said. He was speaking with journalists on the sidelines of the event held on Thursday at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) to welcome the airline’s newest state of the art aircraft.
The new aircraft has sophisticated aspects involving plush leather seating throughout the Business Class and Economy Class cabins; Airbus Industrie’s new “Cool Concept Interior”; and Panasonic’s latest eFX Audio Video On Demand (AVOD) entertainment system with touch screen capability. The seating configuration provides 20 seats in Business Class and 120 in Economy.
This year, SriLankan Airlines will be acquiring more aircraft to increase its fleet upto 18.
With the aircraft costing US$250 million two more will be purchased this year while another one added on in 2012, he said.
In addition as part of the expansion plans the airline intends to purchase an A330 aircraft next year at a cost of US$350 million while a 6-year old A340 will be purchased from Cathay Pacific this year. However, Mr. Wickremesinghe noted that while the airline now intends on purchasing brand new aircraft this A340 from the Hong Kong carrier will be added in order to assist with the increasing frequencies on certain routes.
Altogether at least six aircraft will be acquired this year with an A320 and a Twin Otter Floatplane that arrived in Colombo last month.
These new acquisitions are carried out as part of the national objective of achieving the 2.5 million tourist arrivals target by 2016, the Chairman said at the event.
He noted that since 50% of the market share for travelers coming into and going out of the country they are involved in bringing down increased tourists to the country.
Currently they have increased their frequencies upto three cities in the past 12 months and pointed out it was important to increase frequencies to lucrative destinations.
The new aircraft brought with it onboard Civil Aviation Minister Piyankara Jayaratne, MPs P.H. Piyasena, Hunais Farook and Indika Jamindra along with Mr. Wickremesinghe.
SriLankan Airlines CEO Manoj Gunawardena commented on the new aircraft’s interior design noting that this will provide “our passengers with the highest standards in comfort, convenience, and reliability.”
He also noted this will also greatly reduce the average age of the current fleet and will bring about a vastly improved performance, fuel efficiency, and safeguard the environment by significantly reducing engine emissions. The aircraft’s current average age is 12 years and plans are to reduce it to below five years.
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