Owing to the growing demand for seats to Maldives, SriLankan Airlines further expanded the Maldives operations and the first London – Male’ direct flight landed at Velana International Airport yesterday morning.
SriLankan will operate two London – Male direct flights a week with flight departing from London on Friday evening will arrive at Male’ Saturday morning and Sunday evening departure to arrive at Monday morning. Male’- London flights are scheduled for Friday Morning and Sunday Morning accordingly.
Due to the non-availability of suitable slots at VIA in order to increase more direct flights between London and Male’, SriLankan has added afternoon UL115 flights from Colombo which will give immediate connection to London – Colombo service.
“We anticipate extremely an extraordinary winter season. Despite the slow growth of traffic from Far East and South East Asia, it is observed the demand for Maldives from Europe, Scandinavia is tremendously good. Accordingly, we have commenced the London-Male’ direct service. As a OneWorld alliance member airline, this direct service would give an option for passengers from USA, Canada, Scandinavia to connect from British Airways, American Airlines, Finn Air via London to Male’. Our new Paris flights too providing immediate connectivity to Maldives three times a week,” said Fawzan Fareid Country Head for SriLankan Airlines Maldives Operations.
He added that there is a bottleneck at Velana International Airport due to capacity limitations at the terminal. Hence SriLankan Airline’s Plan is to divert most of the traffic or generate new business to GAN which will be commencing on 4th December. This flight will have immediate connectivity from London, Paris, Frankfurt, Riyadh, Dammam, Doha, and Dubai.
Colombo-Gan-Colombo service will be codeshared with Qatar Airways which would boost the global opportunity to increase traffic to the Southern Region. “Maldivian Airline and other stakeholders in the southern region are extremely helpful towards our attempt of resuming GAN service,” Fareid said. “Maldivian will provide both directional connectivity to Huvadhoo to cover more expanded captivity via GAN. Necessary discussions have been done and the schedule has been finalized. We wanted to focus on more unique areas Maldives offer in the southern region on our global marketing activities. Certainly, this will be welcome news to Addu and the entire southern region.”
