Passengers of SriLankan Airlines, the country's national carrier, can now look forward to making their own airline reservations with the newly introduced internet booking engine from the privacy of their home, office or wherever an internet connection is available.

The internet booking engine is a real time interface between the airline's reservation system and the passenger. It allows passengers to search preferred dates, times, available flights, check seat availability and reserve a seat by paying through an accepted credit card.

“The essence of e-commerce is remoteness, and internet booking engine together with e-ticketing allow passengers seamless travel. The airline has developed this booking engine after careful research to make it simple, safe, customer friendly and convenient. There are only 6 steps involved in making a confirmed reservation. The passenger is not confused by too many screens, too many questions or options”, said Nadarajah Prabhaharan, the Senior Commercial Operations Manager at SriLankan.

As a further step in the streamlining process, the airline has adopted the electronic ticketing system, or e-ticketing, to 10 of its destinations making an actual paper ticket redundant. Among these destinations are Delhi, Bombay, Chennai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai. By the end of the year SriLankan hopes to extend this facility to all the destinations on its network.

Explaining the concept of e-ticketing Mr Prabaharan stated, “An airline ticket as we know it has all data pertaining to the passenger's travel recorded on it. If a passenger loses this paper ticket a new ticket must be obtained incurring additional cost, which invariably results in delays and inconvenience. However with online booking and e-ticketing only a print out the e-ticket confirmation page, a soft copy of which is stored in your PC or laptop, is needed.”

With the introduction of these two advances in technology to the national carrier, benefits to the passengers have increased tremendously. Not only does a passenger have the freedom and flexibility to select his preferred travel date, time, class, meals but also provides a safe method to pay online, and obtain a receipt (or print out) saving visits to banks, ticketing offices and travel agents.

Since the passenger's travel information is sent to their email address, additional service requests or communication could be done via email. Bonus Skywards miles can also be accrued to redeem a vast arrany of frequent flyer benefits .Passengers need not carry a document that can be lost, forgotten or stolen.

The whole process from reserving the ticket to buying it is made fast and efficient resulting in increased customer satisfaction.

SriLankan Airlines, which has been expanding rapidly over the last two years, now flies to 42 destinations in 23 countries across Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and has announced plans to begin services to Beijing and several Indian destinations. This summer's schedule saw increasing frequencies to South India, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Dammam and London.

In addition, SriLankan's domestic Air Taxi service with two amphibious Turbo Otter floatplanes has made it possible to travel to any part of the country within one hour.

SriLankan was selected as the “Airline Turnaround of the Year 2004”, by the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) Australia. CAPA assesses the national carrier of Sri Lanka as the Asia Pacific airline that emerged as the most significant regional player by almost doubling its net profits, achieving a substantial increase in international traffic particularly to India, and announcing the launch of new destinations in India and China. This is the latest among more than twenty international awards SriLankan has won during the last three years.