Sri Lankan Airlines restarts flights from Colombo after 9 years

Services were stopped in 2008 for economic reasons; Airline to fly four times a week to Coimbatore

After a nine year gap, Sri Lankan Airlines today recommenced operations from this city to Colombo.

The Airline would operate the service four times a week to Coimbatore, connecting Tamil Nadu's second largest city to the World through its global network, Chief Commercial Officer Siva Ramachandran told reporters here.

He said the services were suspended in 2008 due to economic reasons and added that they decided to start operations to the city, their 14th destination in India, after evaluation and feasability.

The new destination would further strengthen ties between both countries,promoting two way travel for leisure, business, pilgrimages, health requirement and education, he said.

With this addition, SrLankan Airelines now operates 126 flights a week to 14 cities in India,with existing services to Chennai, Tiruchirappali, Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai,New Delhi, Gaya, Madurai, Varanasi, kochi,Bengaluru and Kolkata,he said.

The flights would be operated on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays and the fare would be Rs 11,800, he said adding that the Airlines expected about 80 per cent capacity in its flight.

Asked about the fare increase in view of implementation of GST in India, he said that Airlines had not not seen any impact on both passenger and freight sectors so far.

The Airlines has recently added Visakhapatnam and Hyderabad and with Coimbatore adding to the map, SriLankan's global route network has touched 105 cities in 47 countries, he added.