The Hindu Business Line : SriLankan plans Kozhikode flights

THE national airline of Sri Lanka, SriLankan, which proposes to hike group fares, is also planning to operate flights to Kozhikode on an ad-hoc basis.

The SriLankan Manager, Northern India, Ms Lalini Weerasinghe, told Business Line that SriLankan "hopes" to operate three flights a week to Kozhikode from the summer schedule which comes into effect from March-end this year.

"We have got approval of the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) but now a decision has to be taken on which days the flight has to be operated," Ms Weerasinghe said.

Incidentally, Kozhikode will be the tenth Indian city to which the airline will operate a flight. Besides, the airline is also evaluating the option of operating a flight to Ahmedabad, possibly on a trial basis.

The airline has already announced that it will start a four-times-a-week flight between Colombo and Hyderabad from February 22 this year. SriLankan is partly-owned by the Dubai-based Emirates airlines which has a 43 per cent stake in the Sri Lankan national carrier. The airline has a fleet of Airbus aircraft, including Airbus A-330 and Airbus A-340.

Meanwhile, although the airline is looking at increasing its group fares, the fares charged for an individual passenger will not move northwards, officials said. An airline offers a group fare if a fixed number of passengers are travelling together. Generally speaking, the group fare is lower than what is charged from an individual passenger travelling on the same sector. The hike in group fares, if implemented, will come into effect from March-April this year.

India is an important market for SriLankan as it accounts for about 30 per cent of the total revenue generated by the airlines. Officials said that Chennai, by virtue of having the maximum number of flights, was the highest revenue generator for the airline in India.