SriLankan Airlines increases flights to Muscat
By Victoria Cuthbert
SriLankan Airlines announced that it will introduce two new flights to Muscat from December 23, 2011, at a press conference held in Al Falaj Hotel last week. With this latest addition, the total number of flights from Sri Lanka to Muscat has increased to four every week.
Lal Perera, regional manager for Middle East and Africa at SriLankan Airlines, said, “Our first flight to Muscat was in 1983, more than a quarter century later Muscat has emerged as an important point for the Middle East destinations. Sri Lanka is becoming an important tourist destination and as compared to last year tourism has increased by 50 per cent. In addition to being a workers’ and business class traffic market, Sri Lanka shows a great potential as a leisure and visiting friends and family market.”
SriLankan Airlines wants to offer tourists dual or triple destinations and has been increasing the frequency of flights within Middle East and India. SriLankan Airlines currently operates to seven cities in India with 64 flights per week.
The flights to India has also increased to 77 from last week. “With an increase in the number of flights, we are further facilitating swift outbound passenger travel from Muscat to a wide range of South Indian and Far Eastern destinations like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Jakarta via Colombo. This is undoubtedly a boon to the hundreds of commercial travellers who need to transact business with their partners in these destinations,” Perera said.
SriLankan Airlines recently embarked on a complete transformation of cabins and interiors on the fleet. The new look will have subtle, traditional Sri Lankan aura, to plush interiors and a new state of the art entertainment system. The complete overhaul of its fleet is scheduled to be completed in July 2012.
Lakshman Weerasooriya, manager Oman at SriLankan Airlines, said, “With the dawn of peace, there has been an increase in the number of passengers travelling to Sri Lanka on vacation.
Sri Lanka's geographical location makes it ideal for most expatriates to enjoy dual holidays in Colombo and Far East or Colombo and the Maldives, en-route to India for a normal addit-ional charge.” SriLankan Airlines provides a wide range of benefits like Fly smiles, frequent flyer programme which has been introduced to make the travel experience more enjoyable.
With a global network of partners, the airlines’ Fly Smiles offers passengers a diverse array of benefits and reward tickets to destinations throughout the network. SriLankan airlines operates a fleet of 21 aircraft including A340 and A330 aircrafts. The airlines has also introduced flat-bed seats on business class on its wide bodied A330 and A340 aircraft making travel more comfortable.
(Source: www.theweek.co.om – 28th December, 2011)