Page 17 - AAA JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2014 Online Magazine

FEATURE AIR ASTANA

across the region as well as a demand to work economically on the routes they
for direct routes between east and west, serve. And they also have to be attractive
Kazakhstan is in a prime position to offer to the customer: “We have [relatively new]
air transport relief to travellers and cargo Embraer, Boeing, and Airbus aircraft with
companies alike. more from each manufacturer on order.
All of which puts Air Astana, a 28-fleet Within 12 months, we will take delivery of
carrier, in a position to capitalise on what five A320s, three 767s and two E190s, all
Richard Ledger, Air Astana sales director, of them brand new. In 2017, we will take
describes as a “surrogate home market”. delivery of the first of three 787s. That will
“What we are seeing is an explosion give us one of the youngest fleets in the
of routes across the region. From places world,” he explains.
like Urumqi, Tashkent and Dushanbe we But being in the right place and having
can connect to the Middle East hubs – and a decent network and aircraft is only half
that’s now 10% of our traffic,” he says. the story. Feeding into that network is
“We are connecting into these previously vital for regional and connecting carriers,
underserved markets, and fast becoming says Ledger. “Our codeshares with KLM,
Peter Foster, President, Air Astana the default carrier.” Austrian, Asiana, Etihad, Rossiya and
Turkish mean customers can book right
Mixed Market through from one side of the world to the
But Air Astana’s success has also revolved other – and get the most direct routing,”
around the way it has developed since it he explains.
was established only some 10 years ago. The airline has Interline ticket sales
The plan, says Foster, was dependent on agreements with another hundred or so
planning for foreseeable demand both operators, further boosting its ability to
across the country (the size of Europe, and offer point to point service way beyond that
the ninth largest country in the world) plus of a simple regional carrier or standalone
further afield too. “We need all of these LCC. Better still, this approach works for
types of aircraft because our markets are cargo too. Ledger says some 15 tonnes of
so diverse in terms of size and distance,” profitable cargo passes on the east-west
he says. The choice of a complex mix of corridor every day – on a route nobody
Boeing 767 and 757, Airbus 319, 320 and else services.
321, along with Embraer 190s was dictated
by the airline’s mix of short dense routes Hub Spoke Web
as well as long thinner routes. So the smart regional connectors – like Air
“While it is complex operationally to Astana – are in effect creating what could
utilise so many aircraft types it works be an entirely new kind of model. Not
commercially,” says Foster. He notes that Airbus’s hub and spoke, not Boeing’s point
it would be impossible for Air Astana to to point, but a kind of hub, spoke and web
have a single aircraft type – they all have approach which ensures maximum load

Air Astana has two shareholders,
the Government of the Republic of
Kazakhstan and BAE Systems from
the UK. Its fleet is audited to EU
EASA 145, and has IATA Operational
Safety Audit (IOSA) approval. Over
4,000 staff operate 28 aircraft with
an average age of 6.2 years, over 60
domestic and international routes.
Air Astana plans to expand its fleet to
33 aircraft by the end of 2016, and to
43 aircraft by 2020.

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