November 24, 2018 TnH Global

Srilankan Airlines celebrates 25 years of direct operations from Colombo to New Delhi

SriLankan Airlines commenced its operations to Delhi in June 1993, which makes the airline one of the longest standing airlines operating flights to Delhi with 25 years of continuous operations. SriLankan Airlines started its operation with 2 weekly flights and now it has expanded its services to 2 daily flights after it started its double daily operation to DEL from this year.

Both flights from Delhi have convenient schedules using state of the art A320 New. At present SriLankan Airlines flies from 13 destinations mainly Australia, Singapore, Japan, China, Middle East and the UK with 122 flights a week making it the largest international airline operating to India in terms of the number of destinations.

Reaffirming its strong presence in India, the airline was crowned the World’s Best Airline to the Indian Ocean and Asia’s Best Airline to the Indian Ocean at the prestigious World Travel Awards 2017. Majority of this traffic on SriLankan Airlines is round tour FIT leisure tours to Sri Lanka, however, it has been witnessing a progressive growth in group travel in terms of MICE, Pilgrim tours and destination weddings.

MICE arrivals now account to more than 15 % of all arrivals from Pan India basis which is mainly handled from Delhi and Mumbai as most corporate head offices are based in these cities. MICE groups prefer Sri Lanka due to the proximity to India and also due to multiple gateways assisting to the ease of handling a Pan India movement. In terms of Pilgrim movements, Ramayana tours have become very popular and many operators are conducting back to back series departures. The latest trend for traffic has been destination weddings in Sri Lanka.

The airline this year looks forward working closely together with its GSA partner STIC travels and Sri Lanka Tourism, to further increase the numbers from India to Sri Lanka. To mark the celebration of Srilankan Airline completing 25 years of direct operations from Colombo to New Delhi, Chinthaka Weerasinghe, Manager Northern India – Srilankan Airlines and Subhash Goyal, Chairman STIC Travel Group, GSA-Srilankan Airlines addressed the Media at Hotel The Park, Parliament Street, New Delhi.