SriLankan Airlines to fly to 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 centres around its route network. The airline will offer flights between Colombo and Hyderabad every Monday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Mr G T Jeyaseelan, Head of Commercial, SriLankan Airlines said, ”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 neighbouring 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 adds 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. 

In 2003, India and Sri Lanka liberalised air services between the 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 kilometres off Hyderabad, is India’s ‘most wired city’ and home to firms such 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 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.