SriLankan becomes premier airline in Asia ?
Launched in 1979, SriLankan Airlines, the flag carrier of Sri Lanka, was the first carrier in the Indian sub-continent to join Oneworld alliance on May 2014. SriLankan Airlines has a route network of 109 cities in 48 countries, including codeshare operations in partnership with the world’s finest airlines. SriLankan is established as one of the […]
Launched in 1979, SriLankan Airlines, the flag carrier of Sri Lanka, was the first carrier in the Indian sub-continent to join Oneworld alliance on May 2014. SriLankan Airlines has a route network of 109 cities in 48 countries, including codeshare operations in partnership with the world’s finest airlines. SriLankan is established as one of the leading airlines in the Indian Ocean region, being the largest carrier to both Sri Lanka and the Maldives, and as one of the largest foreign airlines in India.
Website named Newshub.lk carried a post in their web as well as their Facebook page in Sinhala language under the title “ආසියාවේ ප්රමුඛතම ගුවන් සේවය බවට ශ්රී ලන්කන් පිදුම් ලබයි” translated to English it stated “Sri Lankan becomes the premier airline in Asia”. Given below is a screenshot of the stated web page”
| Newshub.lk web link | Archived Link |
Few other websites like newsi.lk also carried this news with the same headline and since we felt there is a mismatch with the news been reported to some other websites we decided to do a fact check on this.
Fact Check (සත්ය තොරතුරු විමර්ශනය කිරීම)
When we checked the article body, almost all of them had reported as “ලෝක සංචාරක සම්මාන උළෙලේ දී අඛණ්ඩව 03 වන වරටත් ඉන්දීය සාගර කළාපය වෙත මෙහෙයුම් සිදුකරන ආසියාවේ ප්රමුඛතම ගුවන් සේවය ලෙස ශ්රී ලන්කන් ගුවන් සේවය පිදුම් ලබා තිබෙනවා” which translated to “Sri Lankan Airlines has been honored as Asia's leading airline operator to the Indian Ocean for third consecutive year at the World Travel Awards”
We did a google search for World Travel Awards and came across their winners for 2019 via official website. The award ceremony was held at Phu Quoc, Vietnam and given below is a snapshot of the results page for awards winners for Asia.
| World Travel Awards Web | Archived Link |
When we checked each award in detail it was clear that SriLankan was awarded Asia’s leading airline to the Indian Ocean for 2019. Furthermore, SriLankan airlines was indeed one of the nominees for Asia’s leading airline for 2019 award which was ultimately bagged by Singapore Airlines. Given below is a comparison of official results.
SriLankan airlines had confirmed in a media release that “SriLankan Airlines becomes ‘Asia’s Leading Airline to the Indian Ocean’ at World Travel Awards for the 03rd consecutive year” and went on to state that how Sri Lankan has its consolidated presence in the South Asian region.
| SriLankan Press Release on becoming Asia’s Leading Airline to the Indian Ocean |
Below is a photograph of the actual award SriLankan received at the World Travel Awards recently.
Lankanewsweb.net, economynext.com, ft.lk along with most of the business news publishers carried the correct information stating that “ SriLankan Airlines, the National Carrier of Sri Lanka and a member of the one world alliance, has been adjudged the leading airline in the Indian sub-continent.”
| Lankanewsweb.net article | Archived Link |
Conclusion: (අවසාන නිගමනය)
From our investigation it is clear that the awards were given for the Asian region, hence some of the publishers had carried the title “SriLankan becomes premier airline in Asia”. SriLankan was in fact the leading airlines to Indian Ocean and Singapore airlines was awarded as Asia’s leading airline for 2019 at World Travel Awards.
Title:SriLankan becomes premier airline in Asia ?
Fact Check By: Sathyajith SubasingheResult: False Headline
