SriLankan Airlines wins award from Selling Long Haul

SriLankan Airlines, which has frequently won travel trade awards in Europe since re-branding and upgrading its product and service, has once again won a travel trade magazine award in the UK.

The widely read UK travel trade magazine Selling Long Haul has judged SriLankan Airlines to be the best long haul airline from UK to the Indian sub continent for 2002.

Other winners include SriLankan's strategic partner Emirates, Qantas and Cathay Pacific.

Says SriLankan's CEO Peter Hill: "This is a prestigious trade magazine and is widely read by the trade in UK. Therefore this award raises SriLankan's profile in the UK market considerably. It's definitely an important step up."

SriLankan Airlines was named Best Airline for Central Asia by Skytrax Research of UK for two consecutive years - 2001 and 2002. In addition, SriLankan has won awards by Reise and Preise magazine in Germany and Wanderlust magazine of UK in the recent past. 

Says Hill: "The fact that SriLankan has consistently won several important awards in Europe, a major market for the airline, shows that our customers are very satisfied with the product and service we offer. Significantly, these awards have been made after we re-branded and upgraded our product.

Further, these awards also place SriLankan in league with other major players, like our partner Emirates."

The airline's other long haul destinations are Paris and Zurich in Europe and Tokyo in the Far East.

SriLankan Airlines assumed its new identity in 1999. Some of the changes that resulted from the re-branding were the shift to becoming an all-Airbus carrier and introducing modern inflight facilities such as in-seat videos, video on demand, laptop charging and faxing facilities onboard.