By Charumini de Silva

IndiGo, India’s largest and fastest growing low-cost carrier yesterday announced that it will commence daily direct flights from Chennai and Bangaluru from 20 January, marking Colombo as its 8th international and 49th overall destination.

IndiGo Chief Commercial Officer Sanjay Kumar said the commencement of direct flights to Colombo will not only help them to cater to the growing tourist potential, but also to provide affordable travel options to the Indian travellers that can now look forward to visiting the city more frequently.

It was pointed out that IndiGo is the largest Indian passenger airline with a 39.4% market share of domestic passenger volume, with 99.86% operational reliability over the past 11 years.

He said these new flights will further consolidate IndiGo’s position as the fastest growing airline in India with over 150 Airbus A320 and three ATR aircraft strong fleet, operating over 1,000 daily flights connecting almost 50 destinations.

Noting that there are various synergies between Sri Lanka and India for people to travel to India back and forth he said they intend to grow their network to a wider range in the next few months. “We have a simple philosophy of low cost, on time and hassle free, which has worked really well for us during the past 11 years.”

With these new flights to IndiGo will also offer convenient connections to and from Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and other major Indian cities, while it will also provide connectivity to other countries. When asked why the airline took so long to enter the Sri Lankan market, Kumar emphasized that they do not go into a new market just for the sake as they believe in long term commitment with daily operations. “We built up our fleet significantly over the years and now we are focusing on the South Asian market, where Colombo is one of them.”

Kumar also said that they were delighted to partner with Hemas Travel Aviation as its GSA partner in Sri Lanka.

Further on future plans he said that they plan to introduce single fare concept to Colombo in the near future.

Welcoming Indigo to Sri Lanka, Hemas Travel Aviation Group Managing Director Malinga Arsakularatne said they were confident that the team at Hemas Aviation would deliver the growth ambitions of the airline.

“We look forward to a long-lasting and a win-win relationship with IndiGO,” he added.

Source : http://www.ft.lk/travel-tourism/IndiGo-to-start-direct-daily-flights-to-Colombo-from-20-Jan/27-646822