Airwaves

SriLankan Airlines targets Goa to drive Indian inbound

Bhisham Mansukhani - Mumbai

Barry Brown Head of Commercial SriLankan Airlines

Building further on its schedule of frequencies into India, SriLankan Airlines is now targeting Goa (four times a week) to bring in European traffic. It is also considering a fleet of small aircraft to fly into the Indian hinterland.

The frequency, when it is launched, will be a first for any international scheduled carrier. The airline will also use more wide-bodied aircraft on Indian routes once it inducts new Airbus A340 aircraft for flights to Australia and South Africa which it plans to start next year. Ahmedabad and Kolkata are the other two cities which SriLankan Airlines is looking to connect to. It flies to nine Indian destinations, operating 88 frequencies, making it the largest international carrier flying out of India.

SriLankan Airlines head of commercial, Barry Brown says he is mindful of the current European charters operating to Goa but believes the airline can compete on price with these charters. "Scheduled carriers are more reliable and accountable than charter operations. We will look to fly to Goa, four times a week at least, if not daily, while charters have fixed departures. Our advantage is that while the departures will not be fixed, we will offer integrated holiday packages through SriLankan Holidays," Brown says.

According to Nadarajah Prabaharan, its regional manager for Sri Lanka, Maldives and India, "The carrier is also planning to deepen its satellite city connectivity with a fleet of small aircraft to fly to tertiary Indian cities. The Buddhist circuits in India could be looked at as potential inbound attractions as well. Gaya, Varanasi, Coimbatore and Madurai are the kind of destinations we would want to land at."

"The airline will resume flying to Australia and South Africa which it did till 1998. It sees these markets as ideal inbound markets for promoting Sri Lanka, India and Maldives. We recently conducted a research of the Indian market, not just a broad brush but the entire demographics and the pscychographics. This data will be used to roll out an inherently Indian product onboard in 2006. India is the only market that this initiative has been rolled out in," Brown reveals. The airline is targeting a network of 50 Indian destinations by 2010 and has a predominantly leisure market focus, accounting for more than 55 per cent of the Sri Lankan inbound market.