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SriLankan Airlines to join oneworld alliance in early 2014 – more Avios redemption options

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SriLankan Airlines has confirmed that it will officially join the oneworld airline alliance, alongside British Airways, in ‘early’ 2014.

SriLankan is not a large airline, operating just 21 aircraft to 22 countries from Colombo (below). Routes do, however, include Heathrow, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Tokyo, so it will open up opportunities for getting around Asia.

Colombo

Importantly, Colombo is also a key stopping off point for The Maldives, with Colombo being just an hour or so from Male. This opens up yet another potential redemption routing from London, and adds to the new Qatar Airways option that opened up when they joined oneworld.

SriLankan

British Airways resumed its own flights to Colombo this year after a number of years, tagging it onto the end of three existing flights to The Maldives each week.

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Category

oneworld alliance partners

Comments (9)

  • James67 says:
    18 Nov18 November 07:26

    Flew them for first time this year in their new J class. Was pleasantly surptized by whole experience. Nice seat, nice plane, lovely friendly personable staff and good food if you opted for their local cuisine. Alsoexcellent revenue fares which hopefully will not increase as a result of their joining OW. Seat tip – front row on new J class on a330s best avoided. Centre seats had wall mounted screens that were too low, and window pairs had small screens folded into armrest IIRC,,

  • darrenf says:
    18 Nov18 November 07:42

    Flying to CMB next August. I’ve got a revenue ticket back but would rather redeem on BA or UL. Fingers crossed!

  • gnarlyoldgoatdude says:
    18 Nov18 November 09:41

    Wasn’t (Emirates’) Skywards once a joint (or perhaps, separate) scheme with Sri Lankan?

    • James67 says:
      18 Nov18 November 11:11

      SriLankan were part of Skywards but no longer. I think EK had a stake in them or it was some joint venture but no longer. There a340s are old EK metal and still have EK J seats which are comfy enough for intrasia flights. Not sure where they got the a330s but the new J they fitted is not bad at all. They have a number of new a330s on order. Unless necessary to save cash I’m not sure I would want to do Europe to Asia via Sri Lanka in Y but J was fine.

      • needroos says:
        18 Nov18 November 19:48

        Emirates actually used to run Sri Lankan airlines. However, when the their appointed CEO refused to give VIP access and bump revenue passengers to accommodate government officials, the SL government yanked his visa! Flown UL twice now. Nowhere in the league of gulf airlines, but a decent level of service.

  • craig says:
    18 Nov18 November 09:58

    All good news for OneWorld at the moment. TAM joining prettymuch seals South America as LAN was already a OneWorld partner there. Qatar Air joining in the Gulf region and no SriLankan.

    • James67 says:
      18 Nov18 November 11:16

      Bangkok Airways, although small, would be icing on the cake for me. Nice little boutique airline with some useful routes out of BKK that could cut journey times compared to CX and MH options.

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