The Hindu Business Line : `A quarter of revenue comes from India operations and it is growing'

We are involved in a survey of the Indian market to better understand the needs of this market. We hope that by the winter of 2005 we will have a more tailor-made product for India. And that we can start services on the Mumbai-Karachi sector by this time.

The national airline of Sri Lanka, SriLankan, the largest foreign carrier into India operating 71 flights a week to 10 destinations, is clearly bullish about this market. Despite the tsunami forcing some changes in its plans for operating more flights to India, the airline is looking at going the extra mile to woo Indian passengers, including an initiative tailor-made for the Indian market which is underway. During a recent visit to Delhi, the SriLankan's Chief Executive Officer, Mr Peter Hill, outlined the airline's future course of action.<150>

Excerpts from the interview:

On the plans for the Indian market:

Before the tsunami we were looking at some more destinations in India. Ahmedabad was one, but that is on hold now.

For this summer, we will increase the number of flights to those places where we are not operating a daily flight.

Probably the only place to which we will not operate a daily service will be Bodh Gaya.

It is unlikely that we will add any new destinations this summer unless the market rebounds.

We will look at financial year 2006-07 before we are likely to add more destinations in India to our global network.

We are pretty content with the existing air services bilateral agreement between India and Sri Lanka.

However, we may look at replacing the Airbus A-320 aircraft that we operate to some of the destinations in India with a wide-body aircraft.

On the importance of the Indian market:

Over a quarter of our revenues comes from our Indian operations, not from point of sale.

This is something which is growing. However, yields are a problem. We are constantly looking at controlling and reducing operational costs.

On the impact of low-cost airlines:

Despite the low-cost airline Air Arabia launching operations to Colombo from Sharjah, we are planning to launch a daily double service to Dubai.

A huge amount of our business is networking and we serve all places and address all markets while most of the low-cost airlines offer point-to-point services.

If we maintain service and product level, then others will find it difficult to knock us off our position.

On plans for operating to a third country in the South Asian Region:

We are still looking. We have made a request for a Colombo-Delhi-Kathmandu, and a Colombo-Kolkata-Dhaka service and are also looking at the Colombo-Mumbai-Karachi sector, of which we are actively looking at the Mumbai-Karachi service.

We used to operate on this sector earlier as Air Lanka. Now, we hope to operate at least times a week there and then grow the service.

We are hopeful of starting on this sector during winter 2005 or summer 2006 or perhaps even earlier.

On the absence of Indian cabin crew in SriLankan:

At the moment we are involved in a survey of the Indian market to better understand the needs of this market.

This (the survey) will take about six months and then there should be a change on the ground, in the air and probably also in the advertising for SriLankan.

We hope that by the winter of 2005 we will have a more tailor-made product for India.

We are also improving the language capability of the cabin crew. They will be taught Hindi and Malayalam. This is something which should help the India-Gulf traffic.

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