{"id":86998,"date":"2019-04-05T15:09:35","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T22:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=86998"},"modified":"2019-04-05T15:09:35","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T22:09:35","slug":"sri-lankas-national-air-carrier-to-kick-off-5-year-strategic-business-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/04\/05\/sri-lankas-national-air-carrier-to-kick-off-5-year-strategic-business-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka&#8217;s national air carrier to kick off 5-year strategic business plan"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Source: Xinhua| Editor: Shi Yinglun Courtesy Xinhua<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>COLOMBO, April 5 (Xinhua) &#8212; Sri Lanka&#8217;s national air carrier, Sri Lankan Airlines, on Friday said it had formulated a five-year strategic business plan to transform the island country into a strategic hub for air travel and air cargo in the Asia-Africa-Middle East region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The plan will be implemented this year and will be carried out till 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Vipula Gunatilleka, CEO of Sri Lankan Airlines said that it was important for the airline to have a sound strategy plan and a clear vision for it to become a financial viable entity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A key aspect of the Strategic Business Plan includes developing a route network to match customer demand and market opportunities, including new destinations in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, the Far East and Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The airline will also focus on selecting a fleet that is cost effective and best matches the requirements of the route network, adopting best practices to improve productivity and growing online sales to reach a wider market in a more cost effective manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Digital transformation and technology adoption to transform processes across the Airline have also been identified as top priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sri Lankan Airlines has in recent years been facing high debts and has been searching for an international investor to run the carrier on a private public partnership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2017, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had said the airline had recorded a massive debt of 3.25 billion U.S. dollars and the government&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Xinhua| Editor: Shi Yinglun Courtesy Xinhua COLOMBO, April 5 (Xinhua) &#8212; Sri Lanka&#8217;s national air carrier, Sri Lankan Airlines, on Friday said it had formulated a five-year strategic business plan to transform the island country into a strategic hub for air travel and air cargo in the Asia-Africa-Middle East region. The plan will be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}