Ukraine’s Aerosvit Airlines to enter Sri Lankan skies

Indunil Hewage

Aerosvit Airlines, the largest air carrier of Ukraine, will take to the Sri Lankan skies as a response to surging demand for air carriages to Sri Lanka for its popular destinations. Aerosvit which has excellent connections with 33 countries, covering 80 international routes is set to launch its non -stop flight to Colombo from Kyiv by carrying its first passengers to Colombo on October 23. “Aerosvit will conduct three flights to Sri Lanka per week with the wide body Boeing 767 aircraft and frequencies to the Sri Lanka will be increased in the near future.

Aerosvit is also on the lookout to to have a code-share agreement with SriLankan airlines and waiting for the SriLankan Airlines response to make this effort a success,” Aerosvit Airlines, Sri Lanka Country Manager Yana Sopol told Daily News Business.

In line with the launching of the Aerosvit service to Sri Lanka, it is expected to attract new tourist traffic from countries of North America, Europe and the Middle East to Sri Lanka since Aerosvit flight network Colombo will be connected to the world’s largest cities.Hayleys Leisure and Aviation Sector Head Johann Wijesinghe said “Aerosvit has appointed the Hayleys Group as its general sales agent in Sri Lanka and we look forward to have a long lasting rapport between the two companies.” Commenting on the Ukrainian tourists arrivals to Sri Lanka, Wijesinghe said, Ukrainian tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka in 2010 was 5700 and this year up to August 5100 tourists have come to Sri Lanka. We are optimistic that tourist arrivals from Ukraine to Sri Lanka will cross the 8900 mark by the end 2011.

“We see that business driven travel between Sri Lanka and Ukraine is going to be of increasing demand particulary for ironmongery and mineral based products. As far as tourism industry perspective is concerned, Ukrainian tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka is quite negligible,” Wijesinghe noted.