Sri Lankan Airlines major market is India and it has introduced many initiatives to attract cater to the travellers. The pax numbers are increasing alongwith the flights and this really motivates the airlines to focus here in 2025. Mr. Fawzan Faried, Regional Manager-India, Bangladesh and Nepal, Sri Lankan Airlines in an interview with Vishal Kashyap, Managing Editor,Aviation World speaks about the business from India, and the plans ahead to meet the ongoing travellers. Excerpts…
Kindly focus on the presence of Sri Lankan Airlines into India and how much flights do you operate from here?
Sri Lankan Airlines use to operating 124 flights into India pre-covid and we were the first foreign carrier to operate more than 100 flights to India. But subsequent to Covid, we had to downsize our operations. We are gradually back, getting back to where we were pre-Covid. Currently, we are operating 89 flights a week into India and we want to grow more.
By the end of the year probably we will be having 94 service to India and we are trying to cross 100 flights as soon as possible.
Which all cities of India and number of flights Sri Lankan Airlines operate as of now?
We are operating 14 flights to Delhi, 16 flights to Mumbai, 21 flights to Chennai for a week, 10 flights a week to Bangalore, 4 flights to Hyderabad, daily service to Cochin, 4 flights to Thiruvananthapuram, 8 service to Tiruchirappalli and 6 flights to Madurai. That’s the current setup, but moving forward we want to increase the number of flights to Mumbai up to 19 flights by the end of the year.
Recently Sri Lankan Airlines started a new marketing initiative for the Ramayana Trial. So how is the response till now?
The Ramayana Trail is a game changer for us especially there’s been a lot of efforts putting in to develop that package, marketing strategies. The marketing team went an extra mile to find out the exact locations. The whole purpose is what we really wanted to do is to showcase the real Ramayana to the Indian community.
We want the people to go and visit the exact locations, give proper explanation how it happened and why those locations and things like that. It’s creating momentum. Last week we had 190 passenger group traveling from Chennai purely on Ramayana Trail.
So definitely this is going to be a game changer for us in 2025 and we anticipate the numbers to double, triple by April, May, June during that period. So, that’s going to be a real boost for us as well.
Apart from India, you also look after other regions as well. So how is the response in that region?
Yes, Bangladesh and Nepal come under my territory. Ramayana is especially not secluded to India alone because the community lives across this part of the world.
There is some momentum from Nepal, from Bangladesh and in general, from all three countries within my territory, the tourism in general is growing and growing fast to Sri Lanka. So Sri Lankan Airlines being one of the main carriers which connects India and Sri Lanka.
Any particular number of passengers that you look forward to?
If you look at 2023, we had about 302,000 tourists from India for the entire year, which grew up to about 412,000 in 2024. And we had a good start for January 2025, we had about nearly about 44,000 Indians travelling. The highest number of Indians travelled during the past is the month of December 2024, that’s about 52,000. So 44,000 is a good and it’s above average number. So we see there’s a momentum, there’s a positive growth. So we want to capitalise on that growth.
And then we contribute about 55 to 60% of the total arrivals from India. There are a lot of airlines operating as well, which is also a good sign. There are more airlines coming into Sri Lanka, more the market will grow, and then we will get our fair share. That’s, that’s my objective as well.
What are your priorities in terms of which kind of travellers that exactly you look forward to, or who are the number one, you can say, which category?
Actually, predominantly, our segment is diversified. We have honeymoon couples travelling, we have families travelling. But one segment which we had throughout is the silver segment, which the retired people and so the Ramayana trial package is also correctly fitting into the historical movement of the segment. We want to capitalise on that and then something new, which we are looking at is the destination weddings.
We also want to break into the niche market like golfers ravelling and there are celebrities now, mostly into golf. We want to engage those people to boost this kind of travellers. Sri Lanka has ideal weather, we have about four, four or five world-class golf courses, like 18 holes in Colombo, in Kandy, in Orelia, in Sigiriya.This is something new that we are trying to market in India. That has a huge potential and it’s a niche market as well.
Which type of aircraft you operate right now from India?
It differs from city to city. We have from Delhi Airbus 330 operating to Chennai. Also Mumbai, we have a couple of white bodies coming in. The biggest advantage what we have is, India is more or less a shorter sector for us, three hour flight. So even to cater a larger group, we can deploy a wide body aircraft for the entire group to travel at once and then coming back at once. So this is something, which only Sri Lankan airlines can do operating into India.
What is the seat configuration in Airbus 330?
Airbus 330 version is 28 business class and 269 economy class, flatbed. Of course, we have another version 330-200, which has 18 business class and 251 and also in the 320 range, we have up to about 176 capacity on a narrow body aircraft.
So we have a wider range of aircraft capacity to cater wherever the demand is for us to deploy and, you know, give the best of the service.
