Air Astana is planning to boost its position in the Asian aviation market, building on its dominance in Central Asia and expanding its reach across the continent.
Speaking at the airline’s headquarters in Almaty last week, the airline’s President Peter Foster told Travel Daily that the expansion plans were on track and that new aircraft deliveries would further boost the carrier’s connectivity.
“What we’ve done is to try to develop very heavily our regional network in our near neighbourhood, in south and southeast Russia, and all the countries to the immediate south and west of our borders,” Foster said. “In effect we’re creating a ‘hub and spoke’ strategy similar to that Cathay used in and around Hong Kong and Singapore Airlines used to have in Southeast Asia. That’s very much our strategy now; to build up a dense network of cities around our borders.”
This is a strategy that has been very apparent in 2012. In the first quarter of this year, Air Astana increased its flights from Almaty to Tashkent, the capital of neighbouring Uzbekistan, and Urumqi in Western China, to daily, while the Almaty-New Delhi route was boosted to five flights a week.
This month the airline’s expansion has continued, with a new route from Almaty to the Russian city of Kazan having taken off on 1 June, and flights from Astana to two other Russian cities – St Petersburg and Omsk – commencing on 13 and 27 June respectively.
But it is the launch of flights to Hong Kong that is grabbing the most attention. Air Astana will launch two weekly flights on the Almaty-Hong Kong route from 1 July, and Foster revealed that the Kazakhstan government has now offered visa-free travel for Hong Kong SAR passport-holders, as part of a broader effort to ease travel restrictions.
“Whole issue of visas to Kazakhstan has become a big issue recently… and Kazakhstan is now moving towards offering visa-free travel for all OEDC countries, which would of course include all major Western European countries,” Foster revealed. Such as move would also apply to citizens of Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, the US and Canada, greatly boosting the ease and appeal of travel to Kazakhstan.
Such freedom of travel will become even more important for Air Astana following the delivery of its three Boeing 787 Dreamliners, which are scheduled for delivery in 2018. Foster revealed that the airline is looking at using the new fuel-efficient aircraft to launch services to the US, and possibly Australia.
“We’re just about to start very initial talks with the US DOT [about flights to the US],” said Foster, who also indicated that these flights would likely operate between Astana and cities on the US West Coast. He added that the airline “may well look at Australia over the next few years”.
Southeast Asia is also a huge market for Air Astana, due to what Foster called the “massive amount of leisure traffic into Southeast Asia” from Kazakhstan. The airline’s Bangkok flights will move to daily from Jan 2013, and this will coincide with the launch of twice weekly services to Ho Chi Minh City, which will form part of the Bangkok service.
“Our strength really lies as a strong regional carrier, connecting passengers from our regional hubs in Central Asia to our international routes. No other airline can offer this, and that’s where our strength truly lies,” Foster said.
With seven new routes opening this year alone and fleet expansion plans including not only the delivery of B787 Dreamliners but also B767-300ERs, Airbus A320s and Embraer E190s, Air Astana certainly seems on an upward trajectory.
