India currently accounts for 20% of the carrier’s annual revenue, Dimuthu Tennakoon, head of worldwide sales at SriLankan Airlines, told ET.
“SriLankan and India have had a great relationship throughout. We were the first to operate more than 100 flights to India per week in 2007. Pre-Covid, our weekly flights to India went up to 125. Now they have decreased to about 90 weekly flights,” said Tennakoon. He said the carrier aims to soon start operating more flights to India than it did pre-Covid. SriLankan Airlines currently flies to nine Indian cities and plans to add Ahmedabad next year.
Tennakoon said he hopes that the goal to boost revenue from the Indian market will be bolstered by the airline’s recent rollout of a new distribution portal starting with Indian agents. “We already have 200 agents registered,” Tennakoon said, adding that the Sri Lankan government’s October announcement of visa free travel for Indians will also likely push traffic.
“Sri Lanka had 2.3 million tourist arrivals in 2018; 425,000 of them came from India. Now that number has fallen to 300,000, but this year, I am confident we will surpass the 2018 numbers,” he said.
The airline is among three state-run entities – Lanka Hospitals Corporation and Sri Lanka Telecom being the other two – that are undergoing the process of being privatised. A total of 16 entities have reportedly shown interest in the carrier. There has been market speculation that Indian companies may also show interest, but Tennakon declined to comment.The Sri Lankan government made its last infusion into the airline in March 2021. Tennakon said the airline has returned a leased aircraft and has floated an initial tender to lease five additional wide-bodied aircraft. The airline currently has a fleet of 24 aircraft but only a fraction are operational as many are missing critical parts including engines.
(You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel)
