SriLankan Airlines joined the oneworld alliance in May 2014. From that time it has been possible to earn Avios and British Airways tier points when you fly with them, and to redeem your Avios for flights to Colombo and beyond.
I haven’t covered the airline much on Head for Points because the route network is limited and it was not aggressively priced.
SriLankan seems to have taken a lesson on pricing from Qatar Airways, however. It is currently selling some very attractive business class fares from Paris:
Paris to Tokyo (via Colombo) – €1,074 return (£811)
Paris to Hong Kong (via Colombo) – €1,035 return (£781)
Paris to Singapore (via Colombo) – €1,035 return (£781)
Paris to Shanghai (via Colombo) – €1,026 return (£775)
Other destinations may also be available. Keep an eye on the connection times as you could be stuck with a long stopover in Colombo.
Flights from London are available for around £300 more and from Frankfurt for around £150 more.
The SriLankan website is here.
The Paris flights are on new Airbus A330-300 aircraft. This would appear to get you a Virgin / Cathay style herringbone 1-2-1 layout with a fully flat bed, presumably this:
…. which seems more than acceptable! Looks like SriLankan is another one for the ‘better business class than British Airways’ list …..
You need to book before 29th January for travel before 30th June. A five day minimum stay is required.
As I wrote in this article, Opodo has some ‘flight only’ discount codes at the moment which in theory you could use in conjunction with these fares. In my tests yesterday, however, I could not get Opodo to match the fares showing on the SriLankan website.
Note that, for tier point purposes, Singapore only earns 360 points return (140 + 40 + 140 + 40) because the 2nd flight is under 2,000 miles. Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai should earn 560 points return (140 x 4).
(Want to earn more hotel points? Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Promos’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)
About Head for Points
BA calculator says that CMB-NRT only earns 40 TP which is incorrect. There is a thread on FT about people struggling to get this corrected by BA.
Also worth nothing that UL have a stopover paid by carrier if no connection under 8 hours where they will pay for a hotel, transport and meals.
How do you arrange the free hotel? Is there any information about this on their website? Thanks.
Found it!
http://www.srilankan.com/en-US/flying-with-us/night-stop
Interesting, unless the other Ts&Cs state that there can not be a flight with transit time under 8 hours which you could have taken then it seems as though you could deliberately pick a transit time of 20hrs or so and go for some sightseeing in Colombo and still get the free hotel. No link directly to the other Ts&Cs from the page identified by Joe (Thanks for that by the way).
Text from the link from Joe:
NIGHT STOP
Passengers arriving in Colombo on flights operated by SriLankan Airlines and transiting in Colombo for a minimum of 8 hours and a maximum of 24 hours may be eligible for hotel accommodation, airport transfers and meals with the compliments of SriLankan Airlines.
Passengers must hold a SriLankan Airlines through ticket valid for travel out of Colombo on SriLankan Airlines. Passengers holding two separate tickets will not be eligible for Night stop facility.
Conditions do apply. Please contact your travel agent or your nearest SriLankan Airlines Office for further information.
Also to add, CDG to NRT is only possible due to days of week operating on Saturdays outbound and Sat and Thu inbound
Hi Rob,
You have a typing error change the J to H on Hong Kong in this article
I was just about to put Jong Kong on my must-visit list, since it sounded so interesting! :))
Already fixed before I saw the comment – bit worrying that I missed it last night though!
Can you spend a few days in Sri Lanka with those fares or do you have to connect directly onto Tokyo?
Without the extra stop, Paris to Tokyo via Columbo is a massive detour presumably given how far south Sri Lanka is in relation to both Paris and Tokyo
No stopovers
Isn’t that the point of a mileage run?
Not every flight has to be just for a mileage run !!
Sorry, thought you meant due to no stop-overs…..completely agree on the extra distance point though.
I flew SIN-CMB-LHR in UL J in December, was a very good product and their Serendib lounge at CMB was excellent in my opinion. The 40+140 tier points took a couple of weeks to post to BAEC.
I’m guessing a return to Colombo isn’t attractively priced or it would have earned a mention given it’s the hub 🙁
Big shame there’s no stopovers allowed (even for a smallish fee) especially for Tokyo or I would be booking one of these (friends in Sri Lanka so would be great).
The J product looks nice and well worth trying, especially if they offer devilled chicken on the menu; Spicy !
To confirm, they are not attractively priced at all 🙁
Any idea of travel dates and any other fare rules? I know QR has a min stay of 7 nights on their specials.
Moron, just spotted this in the article. Ignore me! Haven’t had my coffee yet!
Saying that the best fare I can get through is £1109 unfortunately.That’s in I class using the right fare rule. 🙁
OT/
1) Is there any way to get a AA Flight, Booked on AA.com into the BA Manage My Booking?
2) I have a AA flight LAS-JFK (in Domestic First) – Am I correct in reading that’s 210 Tier Points? http://www.britishairways.com/travel/flight-calculator/public/en_gb
1) I looked into this a bit. From what I understand BA and AA use different booking systems, so each provide booking reference IDs incompatible with the other’s system. However, by contacting AA it may be possible to get the equivalent BA number for your booking, which you could then enter into BA Exec. I didn’t bother trying it though, so can’t confirm if it works.
I remember doing this – but you need to find your equivalent BA PNR. I remember there was a website that allowed you to do that, but easiest is to call AA and ask for it.
It’s not quite like Virgin as the seats face inwards and not out. A nicer arrangement IMO.
Inflight service on UK has always been great and decent food too.
“Looks like SriLankan is another one for the ‘better business class than British Airways’ list”
– Any airline that is not on that list? 😉
It really is not hard now is it !
BA 8 or 9 seats across in business, EK, QR etc…. 4 across !!
How can I find out the dates which show this fare?
The website has a grid which allows you to easily see which combos of outbound and inbound work. They all had good availability in May when I was getting prices yesterday.
Damn these fares !! Decided to only jump on one of the QR deals as I could do with saving a bit of money this year but now this….and I want to try the UL J product.
This website is a Godsend but also a curse 🙂
I wonder if these can be credited towards retaining QR status. I presume so as Oneworld.
I shall explore !
By the way, also posted below; Delhi 1060 euro, BKK 1036 euro.
I wonder where Sri Lankan will fly their early A350s? The first one is well on the way to completion. Now that will be worth flying on 🙂
Worth using the multi city tool and pricing to come back to london instead of cdg.
Worked out at €117 more to come back to LHR instead of CDG for my dates.
That’s quite useful to know for future reference.
Anyone found any other destinations ? I’ve checked and certainly there’s no similar price to CMB 🙁
CDG – Delhi (via CMB) 1060 Euro.
CDG-BKK (via CMB) 1036 Euro.
I don’t seem able to find them on ITA, well certainly not the CDG-SIN (using 7-10 day calendar search).
Completely Off-topic
Just received an offer of 12000 avois with a years’ subscription to the Econimist.
https://subscriptions.economist.com/GLB/partners/IberiaPlus/trpl/
I wish I read The Economist. That’s a great deal.
Well you could start !
In order to qualify for the Avios in this offer, you must maintain your subscription for at least one year.
As you can’t get a refund, cancelling would not be sensible anyway!
Slight OT – when booking a redemption flight say 355 days from the booking date, does your passport have to be still in date on the date of the flight or just valid still on the date of booking.
My passport expires in 8 months time but looking to redeem flights 355 days out.
No need to give passport details T-355
Just need to be valid when you fly – also remember some countries require 3 mo remaining validity when you enter, some need 6 mo. Remember up to 9 mo of unexpired time remaining on your existing passport will be added to the new one so if you don’t have any upcoming travel you might be worth doing this sooner rather than later.
My boyfriend and I flew SriLankan Airlines back from Bangkok, via Colombo, in early January, and barring a couple of odd service quirks, thought their business class was excellent. A couple of things to be aware of – our airmiles still have not posted to the Executive Club, and when I submitted a claim, I was told they’d already been allocated. Probably not a feature of the SriLankan/EC interface (and having seen one of the comments above, maybe I just need to be patient) but I hope it doesn’t turn into a saga .. Secondly, the e-ticket T&Cs say that you need to present the credit card used for payment, upon check in. I’ve often seen this on e-tickets, but this time they actually mean it! I didn’t have the card, as I had, like a good HfP reader, used a gold amex charge card to pay for the tickets and had subsequently cancelled it before the second year charge kicked in. I still don’t know why they needed the credit card, but it took three members of staff 20 minutes to sort it out in Bangkok airport – although sort it out they did; a credit to their good service.
A bit off topic but looking to book business class flights for cash from lhr or DUB to Honolulu. Am I better booking as soon as they go on sale for 2017 or waiting until next Jan and hoping for a sale? TIA for any advice
This should, given recent history, be bookable for £1,000ish return ex Dublin or ex Europe somewhere else in the right sale.