Archives

Emirates, Gulf Air suspend Colombo flights

Emirates will suspend all flights between Dubai and Colombo from tomorrow (19) until further notice, an Emirates press release said. Passengers will be rebooked where possible on SriLankan Airlines, Emirates' codeshare partner of the Dubai/Colombo route, the release added.

Gulf Air also said on Monday it would suspend its flights to Sri Lanka from Tuesday due to high insurance costs and would re-route travellers through alternative arrangements.

"Gulf Air is suspending flights to Colombo, starting tomorrow (Tuesday) as a result of the prohibitive cost of insuring its aircraft and passengers on the Sri Lanka route," a company's statement said.

"The airline will make every effort to re-route passengers travelling to Colombo on later flights via an intermediary destination," it said but gave no further details.

Emirates also said that the suspension is due to the hugely increased insurance rates currently levied on each aircraft landing at Bandaranaike International Airport.

Emirates will maintain a presence on the ground on Sri Lanka at its town office and at the airport.

Mike Simon, Emirates' Director Corporate Communications said: "As many passengers as possible will be rebooked on SriLankan Airlines flights. We deeply regret any inconvenience that these changes will cause to our passengers. They have been made unavoidable due to the unprecedented insurance costs that Emirates flights to Colombo now incur. "Emirates fully intends to return to Sri Lanka as soon as normality returns to the insurance market."

Meanwhile, Emirates is to replace metal cutlery on flights to Britain with plastic knives, forks and spoons in compliance with a new British security directive, a newspaper reported Monday.

The airline is considering expanding the move to cover all its flights in response to reports that the hijackers of flights which crashed into New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Washington last week used metal cutlery as weapons, the Gulf News said.

Sri Lankan airlines, which is partly owned and fully managed by Emirates, said it will also replace metal cutlery for its flights to London.

A Sri Lankan spokesman in Colombo said the switch to plastic would take some time, as the airline currently provides metal cutlery in all classes.

Sri Lankan was also the victim of a terror attack in July when terrorists completely destroyed four of its new Airbus jetliners at the airline's only international airport.

Qatar Airways has already complied with the new terms for British flights and is expanding the policy across its network of 28 international destinations.

But a spokesman for Gulf Air -- owned by the UAE emirate of Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar -- told Gulf News the carrier would not immediately consider scrapping metal cutlery and would instead adopt a "wait and see" approach.

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager