SriLankan Airlines has become the first foreign airline to operate 100 flights per week to India.

The national carrier of Sri Lanka reached the important milestone when it added another weekly flight to its existing services to Trichy recently.

“SriLankan Airlines is extremely proud to be the first foreign carrier in history to fly one hundred times a week to India. We recognised very early the important role that India plays in this part of the world, and we have been steadily increasing the number of flights, and the cities that we serve,” said a spokesman.

Coimbatore became SriLankan’s 11th destination in India recently. It operates two flights a day to Chennai and Mumbai, and daily or more frequent flights to New Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Trichy, Trivandrum, Kochi, and Calicut. There are four flights to Coimbatore, and three to Goa.

Manoj Gunawardena, head of worldwide passenger sales, said: “We offer Indian travellers rapid connections via Colombo to our 54 destinations in 28 countries throughout the world. Cities such as Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and London, are very popular with our Indian passengers.”

SriLankan carried 1.1 million passengers to and from India in the 2006/07 financial year, which accounted for 35 per cent of the airline’s global traffic. The airline works very actively to bring tourists into India, promoting the country’s many tourism sites. It has formal partnerships with many tourism authorities such as the Kerala Department of Tourism, he said.

Senaka Fernando, regional manager Indian Subcontinent & Maldives, said: “SriLankan is making a conscious effort to serve smaller cities in India, where travellers do not have access to international air travel as most other airlines are intent on serving the large cities.”

The airline often provides special travel packages to Indian customers to travel overseas for business or pleasure, especially through its leisure arm SriLankan Holidays, and even throws in free nights in Colombo. -TradeArabia News Service