The United Arab Emirates’ carrier, Emirates Airline, has announced that it is cutting its weekly flights to Colombo, Sri Lanka, from 22 to 18 until August 26. Four additional routes, stopping in Colombo, will now fly directly to Singapore and Jakarta. The reason cited by a company for the move was the rising insurance rates, making these routes no longer commercially viable.
Following the Tamil Tigers separatists' attack on Colombo airport three weeks ago, insurance firms have raised the premium for every flight through Colombo. Whereas standard insurance premiums on aircraft stand at 0.1 percent of their value, flights through Colombo have been slapped with an insurance surcharge of up to $115,000, reported Gulf New.
Emirates has been flying into Colombo since 1987, and had increased its flight capacity in 1997. The Dubai-based Emirates Airline partly owns and fully manages Sri Lanka's national carrier, Srilankan Airlines, which was privatized in April 1998. — (Mena Report)
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
