Kingfisher Flies to Sri Lanka from India

Indian carrier Kingfisher Airlines is to launch three additional flights to Sri Lanka from October 1, supplementing its existing daily link to Colombo from Chennai. The carrier will introduce daily flights to the Sri Lankan capital from Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Tiruchirapally; all will be operated using ATR 72 turboprops.

There are currently more than 120 weekly return flights between the two countries offering more than 20,000 seats in each direction. An estimated 1.0 million O&D passengers travelled between the two neighbouring countries in the past year with the largest traffic flows between Colombo and Chennai, a route flown by Air India Express, Jet Airways, SpiceJet, SriLankan Airlines, as well as Kingfisher Airlines.

All three of the new Kingfisher routes are already served by SriLankan Airlines with the national carrier’s fights to Tiruchirapally supplemented by sister carrier Mihin Lanka. An estimated 13,000 O&D passengers flew between Colombo and Kochi in the past year, 28,000 between Colombo and Thiruvananthapuram and 79,000 between Colombo and Tiruchirapally.

Kingfisher is currently the sixth largest carrier flying between India and Sri Lanka with a 7.0 per cent share of the total traffic. The addition of these three additional routes will likely see it position itself in third place behind SriLankan Airlines (41.7 per cent) and Jet Airways (21.0 per cent).