Sri Lankan Airlines will introduce a third daily flight between Bangkok and Colombo aimed essentially at boosting transit passenger traffic to the Middle East and South India.
The additional service is due for launch on July 15 with the arrival time at Colombo reducing waiting time for connecting flights to the two regions.
Flight UL405 from the Thai capital will see the connection time cut by around two hours from the 6-8 hour wait which passengers taking the existing two daily Bangkok-Colombo services endure.
The airline's passengers can enjoy more convenience with much faster connections to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Muscat, Dammam, Bahrain, Riyadh, Kuwait and Jeddah, the airline says.
Connecting flights to Bangalore, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Tiruchchirappalli and Kochi would also be easier, Riza Yusoof, the airline's manager for Thailand and the Mekong Region told the Bangkok Post yesterday.
Sri Lankan's additional Bangkok-Colombo flight is also aimed at attracting more Thai visitors to the country which last year stood at just around 10,000.
The airline intends to use either the single-aisle Airbus A320neo or wide-body Airbus A330 for the additional daily service, depending on traffic volume on any given day, the airline said as it elaborated on the plan.
The service will significantly boost the airline's capacity on the Bangkok-Colombo route which is operated by only one other airline -- Thai Airways International (THAI).
Sri Lankan's existing flights between the two capitals are served by A320s configured with 12 business-class seats and 158 in economy-class, and A330s configured with 22-26 seats in business and 238 in economy.
The new A320neo to be deployed on the third flight is configured with 12 business-class and 138 economy-class seats.
THAI uses two aircraft types on its one daily Bangkok-Colombo flight, the A330 and/or the Boeing 777, which can carry more than 300 passengers.