SriLankan buys new aircraft:

First step in long-term business plan

Sanjeevi JAYASURIYA

In facilitating long-term business plan, SriLankan Airlines acquired its first A320 - 200 aircraft on an operating lease basis investing US $ 350 million.

This is the first step in increasing the fleet and having a young fleet and there will be two more A 320-200 added to the fleet within the last quarter of this year, SriLankan Airlines Chairman Nishantha Wickremasinghe said.

“Our objective is to acquire brand new aircraft and upgrade service standards further. Plans are under-way to increase the fleet up to 30 in two years time. The fleet at present will reach 20 aircraft by end of this year,” he said.

The current fleet age is 12 years and with the acquisition of brand new aircraft the age is expected to reduce up to an average of five years.

“We will be expanding our fleet and supplementing the efforts by increasing frequencies and destinations. We have already added Shanghai, Guangzhou and Kochi and will add Moscow in September this year. The other destinations we are looking at are Far East Asia and Europe,” he said.

SriLankan Airlines have made concerted efforts to put Sri Lanka in to map of global travellers. SriLankan will play a dominant role in bringing in tourists by expanding its operations as air connectivity plays a key role in achieving the target of 2.5 million tourists.

SriLankan has 50 percent market share in Sri Lanka and a similar share outside the country. Its outlook is stable and we expect to end the year better than last year.

However, the last quarter was difficult but, performance was on target for the last nine months, SriLankan Chief Executive Officer Manoj Gunawardena said.

“We plan to increase frequencies of the short and medium haul travel and the brand new aircraft will be utilized for this purpose to provide more comfort for travellers,” he said.

SriLankan has invested US $ 30 million on upgrading and giving a facelift to its aircraft. We have strong regional presence and need to maintain our dominance. The fleet will be geared to increase frequencies and destinations with special emphasis on tourist generating markets.

Gunawardena said they will cover all tourism generation destinations and also plan to target emerging economies for more volumes.

There will be a viable business model in bringing in tourists. However, due to violent upswing and downswing of oil prices the outcome is unpredictable,” he said.