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SriLankan Airlines is expanding its services in Asia starting this
Summer, by resuming flights to Pakistan's largest city Karachi, launching its new service to Kochi in India, and increasing frequencies to
five other destinations - Dubai, Kuwait, Bangalore, New Delhi and Male.
With its third Airbus A320 joining the fleet and increasing fleet
strength to 10 aircraft, the airline will begin operating an A320 to Karachi from June 1,
2003 as flight number UL 183 on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, departing Colombo at 1955 hours and arriving Karachi at
2345 hours.
The return flight UL 184 will leave Karachi at 0100 hours the next day and
arrive in Colombo at 0430 hours.
SriLankan Airlines plans to promote Sri Lanka as a holiday destination
for Pakistanis and also attract MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and
exhibitions) tourism from Pakistan.
The timing of the Karachi flight has been scheduled to maximize
convenience for transit passengers in Colombo who would be taking SriLankan's flights to the Maldives, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok
and Hong Kong through Colombo.
Flights to Karachi had been temporarily suspended in mid 2001 when the
national carrier re-organized its route network to cope with a depleted fleet
of aircraft following the attack on the Bandaranaike International Airport.
The flights between Kochi and Colombo, which began on April 22, will
operate on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
The Dubai and Kuwait sectors will become daily frequencies from June
23, increasing from the present six flights per week.
The number of flights between New Delhi and Colombo were increased
from five to six starting from April 21. The flight is routed via Bodh Gaya
from April 21 to 30 and again from September 1 to October 25.
Flights to the southeastern Indian commercial city of Bangalore have
also be increased to four per week operating on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, up from three per week.
The number of flights between Colombo and the Maldivian capital Male,
will also be increased starting in June, with two flights on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and one flight on Mondays and
Thursdays.
These are in addition to the existing flights to Male from Paris, Tokyo,
London and Zurich.
With Kochi and Karachi, SriLankan's network expands to 32
destinations in 21 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Indian sub continent and
Far East. |
