SriLankan Airlines is set to significantly deepen its footprint in the Indian market, aiming to increase its flight frequency from 90 to 100 weekly flights by the end of 2026. The South Asian country’s flag carrier also aims to add one or two potential destinations in the current year.
India: Key Tourism Market
India is the biggest tourism market for Sri Lanka. In 2025, Sri Lanka recorded around 23 lakh inbound tourists, including 5.31 lakh Indian tourists, which makes 23% of the total figure. SriLankan Airlines’ regional manager for India, Bangladesh and Nepal, Fawzan Fareid, told The Free Press Journal that the carrier aims to strengthen its operations in India by enhancing frequency to the existing nine cities to 100 weekly flights and also introducing one or two new destinations this year.
Current Network Strength
The move underscores India’s status as the airline's single largest and most critical source market. Currently, SriLankan Airlines operates 90 weekly flights to nine Indian cities, including New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Cochin, Madurai, Hyderabad, Tiruchirapalli and Thiruvananthapuram. The airline manages a fleet of 23 aircraft including A330-300 wide body as well as A320-200, A321Neo and A320 narrow body aircraft.
Growth Strategy Focus
“For a small airline like SriLankan Airlines, 90 flights a week to India is a huge number. In 2026, we want to cross 100 weekly flights by strengthening the existing nine destinations while looking at adding one or two potential new destinations. We are very carefully evaluating, crunching data about where traffic is originating from, captive market size, etc. Based on that, we have realised that it is feasible for us to strengthen the existing cities,” said Fareid.
Pre-Covid Network Overview
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, SriLankan Airlines operated 126 weekly flights to 13 destinations within India, including Kolkata, Goa and Coimbatore which were suspended after the pandemic. However, the airline is now looking at Ahmedabad, Kolkata and Coimbatore as potential destinations to start operations this year.
Capacity Deployment Caution
“We understand that there is a huge potential but we are very careful deploying capacities into those cities. You can’t have one frequency a week, you need to have a daily service for it to become a product. The support from the market always remains a question whether there will be traffic from those areas to Colombo on a regular basis. We are doing our assessment at present and I don’t rule out that we pull out one of the destinations very soon,” he said.
Ahmedabad Under Evaluation
He said that Ahmedabad is a high potential market and the airline has been trying to operate to Ahmedabad for the last seven years. He added that the airline’s research shows that it will support their operations, making it the top choice if they decide to start operation to a new place but also added that he does not rule out any other sector which can be selected based on the aircraft block time and other factors of feasibility.
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Mumbai Route Dynamics
While Chennai is the biggest market for SriLankan Airlines, it operates 14 flights per week from Mumbai to Colombo while its competitors like IndiGo also operate double daily flights and Air India operate one daily flight. While the route has about 18,000 seats available weekly, the number of weekly departures is only around 8,000 to 9,000. The airline claimed that it holds 60% market share on the route.
Widebody Advantage
“Mumbai is one of our primary destinations. It is a huge market but the departures out of Mumbai are relatively lower than the capacity provided. In our perception, over capacity is being given to this route. However, we have a healthy cabin factor out of Mumbai and will continue with two frequencies,” he said, adding that SriLankan Airlines is the only carrier operating a wide body A330-300 aircraft on the route, making it an attractive factor for the passengers.
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