With my first class Emirates flights booked to Sri Lanka I looked into making my journey even more comfortable and luxurious by flying to our hotel in Galle and back to Colombo from Tangalle. In normal circumstances I would have tried to get on a Cinnamon Air float plane, but their scheduled services were suspended because of Covid and a private charter would have cost over USD5000 each way.  So my hotel put me in touch with Senok Air to discuss helicopter charters.  I received prompt and detailed service through email with their head of sales, Rosemarie Carter, and agreed to a transfer between Colombo Bandaranaike International Airport (“BIA”) and Galle for USD2200 and one from Tangalle back to BIA for USD2585  (a longer journey.).  For me the price was less than the value of these journeys because of the amount of time saved, and because we would be avoiding the terribly dangerous driving standards on Sri Lanka’s roads.

When our delayed Emirates flight arrived in BIA at 09:26 we were met at the airbridge by a Senok man who took us through immigration, to baggage collection, exiting the terminal as an arriving pax and re-entering it again as a departing pax, on a wandering trek through several security checks and onto a bus which took us to the helicopter waiting on the apron.

refuelling

We got to the Airbus/Eurocopter AS350 helicopter just as they were finishing its refuelling. The chopper was registered 4R-MSS and it was black with gold detailing.  Across the apron we could see the Emirates 777 we’d just arrived on.

I was lucky to be offered a front seat next to the pilot and Mr A sat behind me on a row of 4 seats.  The pilot gave us both a pair of headsets so we could listen in on the communications with air traffic control.  Our departure procedure was quite bizarre in that we didn’t just fly away up into the sky, we ‘pretended’ to be an aeroplane, hovered along the taxiways and waited our turn to enter the runway for ‘take-off’.

From BIA we headed towards the coast and headed southeast.

After half an hour Galle fort came into view, and after a short ‘fly-by’ we landed on a patch of land between the fort and the cricket field, from where our hotel car drove us the 2 minutes to our hotel, Amangalla.  This was so much better than a 3 hour drive from the airport!

Our flight back to BIA on New Year’s Day 2022 was an early (07:15) departure for the 45 minute journey, to enable us to catch a 09:55 flight to Dubai.  It was the same helicopter, as I think Senok only has the one, but a different pilot. Once again I got the front seat!

This time the flight was all over land, so we had the chance to view Sri Lanka’s lush green landscapes.  We noticed lots of morning fog en route, and wondered how that might have affected a journey by road.

Before long we saw BIA and made our descent.  This time we approached onto the main taxiway parallel with the runway and flew slowly along following the taxiway to our stand.  A bus was waiting to take us into the airport, where we once again exited and re-entered to check in for our flight home, with a Senok man helping with our bags all the way.

Flying with Senok Air was simple, comfortable, great fun and worth the money. 10/10