SriLankan Airlines to establish its presence in Australia

Starting October 29, SriLankan Airlines will begin a daily nonstop service to Melbourne.

The airline will deploy its Airbus 330-200 on this route. The aim is to serve the large Sri Lankan expatriate communities in Australia. It will also facilitate passengers from South Asia and the Middle East seeking onward connections via Colombo to/ from Australia.

The operation will add to the existing double daily services offered by SriLankan Airlines between Colombo and Melbourne via Singapore and Kuala Lumpur with its codeshare partners, Qantas and Malaysia Airlines respectively.

The new service that starts in October will depart from Colombo for Melbourne at 2350 and land at 1525. The return flight will depart for Colombo at 1655 and arrive at 2215.

“Our presence in Australia cements the long-standing relationship between our two countries. We recently celebrated the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between our nations, and the addition of Melbourne signifies our strategy of optimising the airline’s network in line with our restructuring. This also means that we have connected another continent to our global route map. On the other hand, given the number of Sri Lankans residing in and around Victoria, we fulfil a long felt need for a direct service. We are proud to welcome all the diverse residents of Victoria who can now enjoy the direct connections when visiting their friends and families throughout our network,”says Captain Suren Ratwatte, chief executive officer of SriLankan Airlines.

From Colombo, SriLankan Airlines connects to over ten Indian destinations with over 100 flights a week. These include Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Trivandrum, Tiruchirappalli, Cochin, Mumbai and New Delhi. srilankan.com