SriLankan Airlines expands its services in Asia

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.