SriLankan, Mihin to merge commercial synergies -New CEO

Ravi Ladduwahetty

SriLankan Airlines and budget carrier Mihin Air will be run as two independent airlines merging commercial synergies, new SriLankan Airlines CEO Manoj Vaas Gunawardena told Daily News Business.

He said that SriLankan will be carrying all the booked passengers of Mihin Air for May in the absence of aircraft but there were no booked passengers for June for the budget carrier yet.

The strategy of the national carrier would be to have commercial cooperation between the two so that Mihin plays the role of the feeder carrier for SriLankan Airlines. Quoting an example, he said that when Mihin brings in passengers from Trivandrum to Colombo, SriLankan will take them on the bigger routes.

He said that the operation would be formulated ensuring no conflict between the two. SriLankan would not operate flights to the same destinations at the same times as Mihin.

The SriLankan CEO explained that there would not be any reductions in the UL flights to common destinations. "What would happen is that we will reschedule flights so that schedules would not overlap into each other," he said.

The code sharing agreements with Emirates have been terminated. But the other code sharing agreements with Malaysian Airlines, Etihad Airways and British Midland Airlines still stand. "SriLankan Airlines, like any other airline has traffic rights to various destinations which it has enjoyed and Emirates cannot eat into that. There is no great risk of that happening," he said.

"The biggest priority of the Airline was to turnaround the company from staggering losses largely due to the aviation fuel prices being 30% higher than budgeted. Our losses are more than anticipated," he said.

Airline operations were difficult with fuel at US$ 126 per barrel. The priority is to break even and have a surplus, he said. Asked what the strategies for that would be he said that some of the existing contracts would be reviewed, renegotiated and revised.

He said that one of the biggest strategies would be to increase the tourist traffic by increasing the frequencies between India, the Gulf and Colombo. Asked about the mass exodus of pilots in search of greener pastures, he said there were 100 pilots which he said, was adequate.

No flight has been postponed or cancelled due to non-availability of cabin crew, he said. However, he conceded that there was a demand for flight crew in the event of the expansion of the route network.