Exclusive Interview with Mr. Ashok Pathirage Chairman, SriLankan Airlines
Aviation World,New Delhi,India
SriLankan Airlines has assured Indian travelers that the airline is committed to increase the flights to destinations that were temporarily halted due to the pandemic, restore operations to pre-COVID-19 levels, and offer a wide range of connections to SriLanka. In an exclusive interview, Ashok Pathirage Chairman, SriLankan Airlines briefs Vishal Kashyap, Managing Editor, Aviation World about the future plans and strategies of the national carrier. Excerpts…
How do you see India from business prospective?
India is our biggest market and we are dedicated to re-establish operations to full scale where the Indian market is concerned. We continued to operate both passenger and cargo flights to and from India even during periods of lockdown and despite many global travel restrictions. Now, things are moving on appositive note and we see getting back to normal India operations soon.
What strategies SriLankan Airlines is taking to restore travel from India?
It is an ideal time to create awareness about SriLankan Airlines’ operations in the Indian market and build confidence among travelers to book with the Airline as lockdown are being lifted and global travel restrictions are eased out.
The inflow of tourists from India to SriLanka has increased considerably in the last few months, with Sri Lanka being one of the first few countries to open borders and welcome fully vaccinated Indian travelers. Undoubtedly, India is one of Sri Lanka’s most significant source markets for international travelers.
How did you capitalize the Covid slowdown?
When global aviation was at its lowest point, SriLankan Airlines continued to launch flights to new destinations like Nairobi, Korea, Moscow, Frankfurt, Sydney, Kathmandu and Paris during 2020 and 2021.SriLankan Airlines’ global network expanded significantly, and all new destinations were introduced after thorough studies of factors such as demand, frequency and response. The new routes are indicative of the Airline’s continuous commitment to enhance its network and the travel options available to its passengers worldwide.
Are their plans to add more aircraft in your fleet to manage the enhanced capacity of 250-300 weekly flights to India in the next few years?
Absolutely, I mean our current fleet is not good enough for us. I also mentioned that that we are planning to be a very strong force in the region. New terminal building is also being developed in Colombo a s[part of the expansion plan which will further increase the passenger capacity by about three- to four times from the current level. So, we are planning for that with or without the newer aircraft and fleet renewal. It might not be 300 flights, who knows, it may be even more.
“At SriLankan Airlines it is one of our priorities to see the challenges. We have survived (the pandemic) now we want to build the airline. We do not just want to survive, we want to build a powerful airline which can help our economy”
How you see the situation now when the market is opening for your airlines in perspective to India as well as overseas?
Now, most of the countries are relaxing as large number of citizens have received the vaccines. We have seen strong demand especially from the Eastern Europe .UK has been our strongest market and from our perspective now we have launched flights to France and Moscow after 6-7 years lapse. So, with all these we feel like things are getting back to normal. We can see lot of traffic going out to Middle East and coming in, that’s mainly the labor traffic that’s almost back to normal. But then India is as you said it’s a very important market for us. Today, we are operating about 54 flights a week compare to 120 flight pre-Covid. Hopefully, we feel that India should comeback to normalcy within one calendar year as pre-Covid levels and from there we hopefully want to increase. There is so much of opportunity in India and obviously SriLankan Airlines and also our tourism authorities has overall put much focus here to take up the market.
How are you planning to make a balance between commercial and cargo operations as during lockdown cargo seemed to be key revenue generator?
Primarily we are a passenger airline, so we are not going to sacrifice passenger business because of any short term business like what we did during Covid lockdown. It’s all amount to foreign revenue as the national airline what we bring to SriLanka by way of tourism. It’s a direct and indirect process from that perspective. Of course cargo as I said, there is export which is also important. But the passenger aircraft are used for passengers and with whatever capacity left behind will be used for cargo. There is a big focus going on for cargo where we are looking for freighters exclusively for our cargo business. Accordingly, Cargo operations emerged as a key activity in the Airline’s business model, and SriLankan plans to introduce more dedicated Cargo flights to its operation.
On the pilot training part are there any plans to enhance in-house simulator training facility?
Our pilots are completely getting trained in SriLanka in our in house facilities. At , we have two simulators, one for A-320 and second for A330. Of course, if someone wants to go abroad and get trained they do that. We do have our own aviation regulator which certifies all such pilots as per the standard process.
Finally a hypothetical question I want to put across. When do you see 100 per cent resumption of flights?
If everything goes well than I see in one year’s time by December 2022 things will be normal and we will resume to 100 per cent of our capacity.
