SriLankan Airlines to Return to Rome in December

SriLankan Airlines is returning to the fabled city of Rome from 3 December 2008, with a thrice-weekly service. The flight, which will be operated with Airbus A340 wide-bodied aircraft, will operate on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday and take the route Colombo-Rome-Paris-Rome-Colombo. Flying time to Colombo will be of 10 hours duration.

The service will be particularly convenient for Italians travelling to the sunny resorts in the Maldives. Italy is the largest country of origin of tourists to the Maldives, with more than 120,000 visitors annually. SriLankan Airlines is the largest operator to the Maldives, with 21 flights a week to Male from Colombo, London, and Tokyo. Male is a short 75-minute flight from Colombo.

SriLankan also has convenient connections from Colombo throughout the Far East, including Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Beijing. It is one of the largest carriers into India, where it serves 11 cities.

The flight, UL563, will originate in Colombo at 1 a.m, and arrive at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport at the convenient time of 7 a.m. it will depart Rome at 8 a.m and reach Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris at 10:10 a.m.

The return journey, UL564, will commence from Paris at 11:50 a.m. and arrive in Rome at 1:45 p.m. Takeoff from Rome is scheduled at 2:45 p.m. for Colombo, where it will touch down at 5 a.m. the next day.

Rome was among several destinations to which SriLankan suspended services in 2001, when the global airline industry faced a crisis following September 11.

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