Hyderabad: Hyderabad will be SriLankan Airlines’ ninth destination in India when services begin on February 22, 2004. SriLankan is launching services to Hyderabad in a bid to promote Sri Lanka and India as twin destination holiday centers around its route network. The airline will offer flights between Colombo and Hyderabad every Monday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Says SriLankan’s Head of Commercial G T Jeyaseelan: In the post 9/11 scenario, SriLankan is one airline that has been performing well. In the last two years our average seat factor has been 75%. We thus plan to aggressively market our homebase Sri Lanka and neighboring India as twin holiday destinations. Each offers tremendous value for money and has its own unique attractions: while India offers the richness of a whole sub-continent, SriLankan offers the rarity of a small island rich in variety. The two complement each other beautifully.

Jeyaseelan says that the airline will promote Sri Lanka in Andhra Pradesh. Apart from promoting India as a tourist destination, SriLankan will also promote Hyderabad in particular around its route network. India and Sri Lanka in 2003 liberalized air services between their two countries after a meeting of their Prime Ministers in New Delhi. Under this agreement there will be increased air access between the two countries.

Hyderabad, the capital of the southern India state of Andhra Pradesh is another magical Indian city, offering an eclectic mix of the hi-tech and ancient. Hyderabad is now India’s IT centre. Cyberabad, 15 kilometers off Hyderabad is India’s ‘most wired city’ and home to such firms as Microsoft and Oracle.

Among the old, there’s a variety to view - Charminar (the Arc de Triomphe of the East), Golconda Fort, Salar Jung and the Nizam’s Silver Jubilee Museum. Cuisine-wise, the variety is no less rich: spicy kebabs, rotis and the all-time favourite - biriyani. India is the country to which SriLankan has the most number of weekly services. Currently SriLankan offers nearly 60 flights per week to India with daily services to New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Trichy and Trivandrum and soon, Bangalore.

In 2003 India was the country with the second highest number of visitors to Sri Lanka. In India, SriLankan Airlines is the foreign carrier with the most number of flights into the country. SriLankan will soon be adding an Airbus A320 to its fleet for the flights to India that it plans to deploy. The rest of the fleet comprises of five A340s, four A330s and three A320s, two AN12 freighters and one Cessna Caravan float plane.

The airline plans to offer daily frequencies to all its destinations in the near future. In 2004, SriLankan plans to resume services to Rome and launch flights to Beijing. The airline’s two freighters operate a regional service to South and South East Asia.

SriLankan has been winning a string of international aviation awards in recent times which prove that it is now one of Asia’s leading airlines. In the last three years (2001, 2002 and 2003), SriLankan has been voted Best Airline in Central Asia by UK’s Skytrax Research which each year conducts the largest passenger survey in the airline industry. In 2001, this was the airline’s first major accolade since repositioning its services a world-class carrier. The consecutive victory in 2002 affirms consistency in world-class service and is a seal of approval from customers of same.

SriLankan is also First Runner Up for Skytrax Best Cabin Staff award for 2003 and was also voted for the same year by Skytrax as having the friendliest cabin crew.

In 2003, SriLankan won another prestigious accolade - Best In-flight Entertainment (for a fleet size of 20 or less) at the annual World Airline Entertainment Association’s Avion awards in the USA.

-MK
Reachout's News Bureau
Feb' 2004

More 'Hyderabad Watch'......