24 April 2021 08:31 am
In response to the Daily Mirror article on Thursday, titled 'UL planning fully sponsored VVIP flight to Nairobi next week?', Sri Lankan Airlines stated the said flight would not carry any VVIPs on board but instead would have only journlalists as part of a media familiarization tour.
In an email response, Sri Lankan Airlines said, "SriLankan Airlines wishes to reiterate that the airline did not plan any VVIP flight but is following industry norms when launching a new destination, whereby the promotional activity will take place to welcome the inaugural flight at the inbound destination. Accordingly, SriLankan had received an invitation from the Sri Lankan expatriate business community living in Kenya to organize a media familiarization tour for journalists based in Colombo, the cost of which will be borne by them. Apart from that, SriLankan Airlines had not invited personnel as mentioned in the article to make this a VVIP flight.”
When questioned as to how many journalists would be on board the flight to Nairobi, Sri Lankan Airlines said the numbers were yet to be decided purely based on their Kenyan counterpart’s request.
As reported earlier, the launch of the Colombo-Nairobi weekly flight is likely to be scheduled for April 29. (Jamila Husain)