Air Astana, the flag carrier of the Republic of Kazakhstan, is celebrating its seventh anniversary with plans to significantly expand its Central Asia network to include more cities in southern Russia and other neighbouring countries. The airline initiated this strategic programme with the recent launch of services from Almaty to Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan and Urumqi in western China. A fleet of new generation Embraer EM190 airliners have been selected to specifically operate on Air Astana’s expanding Central Asia network, with the first two leased aircraft scheduled for delivery in early 2011. Airbus A320 Family aircraft will operate these services in the interim.

“Over the past seven years, Air Astana has established itself as the industry leader in the CIS/ Central Asia region, with an outstanding reputation for providing safe, reliable and comfortable air services on both its domestic network and long-haul routes to major cities in Europe, Middle East and Asia,” said Peter Foster, President of Air Astana. After detailed market analysis, we have identified enormous opportunities to expand further over next five years with a new network of services to neighbouring countries operated by a fleet of low cost, high comfort, Embraer EM190 aircraft.”

Despite challenging conditions in 2008, Air Astana continued to achieve growth and profitability, with available seat kilometers up by 16% to 7.5 billion compared to 2007. Passengers carried increased by 8% to 2.3 million.  Almost 28,000 scheduled passenger flights were undertaken, with an average load factor of 64%. The fleet grew to 21 all western aircraft  (2 Boeing 767 /4 Boeing 757 /10 Airbus A320 Family / 5 Fokker 50) during the year and will increase further to 28 aircraft by 2013.
 
www.airastana.com

5/22/2009 12:31:29 PM UTC    Comments