SriLankan Airlines Adds A Record Number Of Sydney & Melbourne Flights – by JAMES PEARSON

Where do passengers go?

Booking data shows that most of SriLankan’s Melbourne passengers in 2019 were point-to-point (P2P). They only flew between Melbourne and Colombo. That’s good as P2P is higher yielding than connecting traffic.

Still, approximately 80,000 passengers transited from Melbourne over SriLankan’s Colombo hub. Over nine in ten passengers connected to/from India, especially to/from Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Chennai. The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows over 700,000 Indians in Australia in 2020.

SriLankan actively targets India demand; hardly surprising given its size. Indeed, Qantas launched Delhi from Melbourne and Adelaide, and it’ll begin Bangalore this September. Elsewhere, Pakistan International is expected to begin Lahore-Sydney soon.

These were SriLankan’s main connecting markets to/from Melbourne in 2019. Image: GCMap.

Connects to up to seven places

Analyzing SriLankan’s connections for the first week of this coming June shows that only seven two-way connections are available from Melbourne and six from Sydney. That’s based on up to a five-hour wait and flying no more than 50% out of your way.

The seven are Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Karachi, Lahore, Mumbai from Melbourne, and all these except Lahore from Sydney. That’s a market of over 950,000 passengers based on 2019 numbers.

It has been many years since I last flew SriLankan. Have you flown them recently? If so, share your experiences by commenting.