TravTalk India Online Magazine
Melbourne joins SriLankan Airline’s network from October 29, offering connectivity between Colombo and Australia for the tour-based market from India.
SriLankan Airlines, the national carrier of Sri Lanka and a member of the oneworld alliance, will be establishing its presence in Australia with daily non-stop services to Melbourne from October 29 this year. The non-stop services will also facilitate passengers from the Middle East and South Asia seeking onward connectivity via Colombo to/ from Australia.
The airline will be operating Airbus 330-200 aircraft on the route. Siva Ramachandran, Chief Commercial Officer, SriLankan Airlines, said, “We witnessed a steady increase in passengers travelling between Colombo and Melbourne via various Asian connecting points such as Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. SriLankan is the only carrier that offers connectivity of this nature at this time. We also offer onward connections beyond Colombo to destinations in the Indian Subcontinent and Middle East. SriLankan Airlines’ passengers will also have the choice of flying to other Australian cities such as Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide as well as Auckland, New Zealand.”
Chinthaka Weerasinghe, Manager – Northern and Eastern India, SriLankan Airlines, says, “We are excited by the commencement of our flight to Melbourne considering the large ethnic market in North India especially from the Punjab region. In addition, there is a growing tour-based market to Australia from India which we will be catering to through this flight.” For travellers seeking onward connectivity from its Colombo hub, SriLankan currently connects over 10 Indian points with over 100 flights a week, which includes services to/from Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Trivandrum, Tiruchirappalli, Cochin, Mumbai and New Delhi. SriLankan will be adding Visakhapatnam, Coimbatore and Hyderabad to its route network in July this year.
