SriLankan Airlines launches new aircraft

National carrier, SriLankan Airlines began commercial operations on its newly acquired Airbus 330-300 with a direct non-stop service to London last week.

The new A330-300, the first of seven such aircraft on order from Airbus was inducted to SriLankan’s fleet last month, launching its wide-body fleet renewal and replacement program to reduce costs, improve operational efficiency and provide an enhanced product offering to customers.

Chief Operations Officer, SriLankan Airlines, Captain Druvi Perera said, “We have begun commercial flights with our new Airbus 330-300 aircraft and will deploy it on a number of medium and long-haul routes as part of a performance evaluation process implemented by the airline for induction of new aircraft to its fleet."

"The first of such flights was operated by the new A330-300 with a non-stop service to London on Sunday, one of our oldest traditional markets.

The performance evaluation program will continue for three months during which the deployment of the aircraft on a particular route will be decided after an evaluation of passenger volumes, route yields, demand for Business Class, frequency and consistency of the product and the number of aircraft needed to support the frequencies to a particular destination," he said.

“We will deploy the new A330-300s primarily on Far-Eastern routes including Bangkok, Tokyo and Chinese cities of Canton and Beijing,” Perera said.

“We will see a ramp up in our delivery program with the arrival of our second A330-300 next month and the remaining new A330-300s to be inducted in 2015.

The aircraft will be assigned for mainstream long-haul operations, replacing the older A340s in the interim. The new generation A350-900s due to join our fleet from mid-2016 will eventually take over long haul routes and the A330-300s will be deployed on medium haul operations," he said.