‘Whether we privatize or not, we will make a difference’

SriLankan Airlines’ CEO, Richard Nuttall has told The Hindu recently that India is a massive opportunity for Sri Lanka’s travel and tourism market.

“We are the nearest international beach destination to India. India is the biggest source of tourists for Sri Lanka at the moment, but the reality is, the number is peanuts. We get 20% more tourists from India, which has 1.4 billion people and is next door than we do from the UK that is 11 hours flying time away. We should be getting 10 times that amount,: he has said.

The second thing about India is that it is the most populous country in the world. The economy is growing fast and in broad number terms, India has half a commercial aircraft per million people. China has three; even in Sri Lanka, we have one, and the U.S. has 30. Now, the fact that we have more in Sri Lanka than India and we have no domestic market – tells you how big the opportunity in India is.”

“When you look at India, the big hubs in India are Mumbai and Delhi, West and North. And you have all of those huge cities that maybe have LCC (low-cost carrier) feed to near destinations, but don’t have long haul feed.

Now, if you want to fly from Chennai to Australia and there’s no direct flight, do you want to fly back to Mumbai? Or do you want to go to Colombo or maybe somewhere else? The point is that we are perfectly positioned for all of those cities. We already fly to nine cities in India and we’ll add more. And the other advantage we have is that because of cultural similarities, Sri Lankan crew tends to be much better at providing service to Indians than maybe other nationalities.”

” We have a strong presence in southern India. I think the most obvious next destination is Ahmedabad. It’s a big market, and an underserved market and a relatively wealthy market. So that’s probably the next big one. But there are other cities that we’ve flown before and other places that if we can expand the narrow-body fleet.

We were the first international airline to do 100 flights a week to India. Now we’re back at about 60-70 because we don’t have aircraft. But we should be back within five years. I would love to be at 200 if we could get the aircraft in to provide the connectivity. One can’t be too precise on years because it’s going to depend on how fast you can get aircraft and whether we privatize or not will make a difference. That’s the goal,” he has said.