oneworld comes to Sri Lanka
That's right. Effective tomorrow, ie 1 May 2014, SriLankan Airlines will be part of oneworld, making it the 15th and newest mainstream airline member of oneworld (I'm excluding affiliates of oneworld here). This also makes SriLankan the first airline from the Indian subcontinent to actually join (unlike AI threatening to) a global aviation alliance.
To be honest, SriLankan hasn't been on my radar much till date, because they don't offer a lot in terms of connections to my usual places of travel. Having said that, aviation fuel costs in Sri Lanka are apparently a lot less than in most parts of the world, which is great news. In fact, I recently spotted a MAA-DXB r/t business class fare for under Rs 35k, via Colombo. It is also the airline with the most options to fly to the Maldives (3 flights a day, if I'm right), which makes it an interesting proposition.
SriLankan operates a 2-class configuration on most of its aircraft, offering economy and business class options. There are also several online reviews that you can look up, that are quite positive about the F&B services on board.
Their Fly Smiles loyalty program will also award you full miles for the distance travelled, with a minimum earning of 500 miles (750 in business class). The airline also offers a bidding based upgrade scheme, but that could be a hit-or-miss thing. The program comes with four levels - Platinum, Gold, and Classic (which correspond to oneworld's Emerald, Sapphire and Ruby tiers, respectively). I may mention here that the airline has actually gone about creating new tiers and exiting old ones, just so that they are as much as possible on par with oneworld. The program also offers a separate Baggage Bonus, independent of the benefits in the Fly Smiles program.
I would have expected the airline to make a bit of noise about this, but their website is rather quiet. In fact, the image of aircraft on their website as of today (30 April 2014) is still the old one.
You can read AJ's post on SriLankan joining oneworld here, along with a picture of the new livery.
I'm looking forward to using some of my oneworld miles I earned when I flew with Cathay Pacific a couple of years back. Are you looking forward to flying SriLankan any time soon?
To be honest, SriLankan hasn't been on my radar much till date, because they don't offer a lot in terms of connections to my usual places of travel. Having said that, aviation fuel costs in Sri Lanka are apparently a lot less than in most parts of the world, which is great news. In fact, I recently spotted a MAA-DXB r/t business class fare for under Rs 35k, via Colombo. It is also the airline with the most options to fly to the Maldives (3 flights a day, if I'm right), which makes it an interesting proposition.
SriLankan operates a 2-class configuration on most of its aircraft, offering economy and business class options. There are also several online reviews that you can look up, that are quite positive about the F&B services on board.
Their Fly Smiles loyalty program will also award you full miles for the distance travelled, with a minimum earning of 500 miles (750 in business class). The airline also offers a bidding based upgrade scheme, but that could be a hit-or-miss thing. The program comes with four levels - Platinum, Gold, and Classic (which correspond to oneworld's Emerald, Sapphire and Ruby tiers, respectively). I may mention here that the airline has actually gone about creating new tiers and exiting old ones, just so that they are as much as possible on par with oneworld. The program also offers a separate Baggage Bonus, independent of the benefits in the Fly Smiles program.
I would have expected the airline to make a bit of noise about this, but their website is rather quiet. In fact, the image of aircraft on their website as of today (30 April 2014) is still the old one.
You can read AJ's post on SriLankan joining oneworld here, along with a picture of the new livery.
I'm looking forward to using some of my oneworld miles I earned when I flew with Cathay Pacific a couple of years back. Are you looking forward to flying SriLankan any time soon?
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