Air Astana plans daily flights to Bangkok

 

“We intend to fly daily routes between Bangkok-Astana and Bangkok-Almaty somewhere between the end of 2019 and mid-2020 with new Airbus 321-neo aircraft,” said Peter Foster, president and chief executive officer of Air Astana.

Currently, Air Astana operates four times a week from Almaty to Bangkok and twice a week from Astana to Bangkok. The airline also operates on code-sharing agreement with Bangkok Airways to bring Kazakh tourists to Thailand’s top tourism destinations like Samui and Phuket. 

“Primarily, Southeast Asia is very important for our domestic market here for vacation travel and Southeast Asian destinations are very popular in Kazakhstan. Obviously, the route is increasingly being used by travellers from other markets such as Russia, Ukraine and Georgia,” Foster stressed.

“We would like to see more business coming from South-east Asia to Europe in the future,” Foster said, adding that his airline’s overall break-even load factor was at 61.5 per cent and the actual load factor was at 65 per cent for the routes to/from Southeast Asia. 

By the end of next year, the airline expects to see 10 per cent of total traffic from the Southeast region, from the current 6 per cent, mainly driven by transit business from this market. 

In addition, the CEO believed that his airline was very competitive as it could achieve operations |at 4.5 cents cost per available set kilometre (CASK), suggesting that this rate was much cheaper than some leading low-cost carriers. Therefore, the airline was in a position to transfer that advantage in fares and pricing.

He said the clear direction for the company was to go for long-haul, low-cost operations in the near future, using the geographical advantage for transit passengers. 

With this major advantage, the Kazakh carrier believes that the cost-based operation would enable profitable growth. In the first quarter this year, the airline posted a net loss of US$6.6 million, reversed from the net profit of $8.3 million in the same period last year, mainly due to the devaluation of local currency tenge. 

“Even though Kazakhstan itself cannot compete with other markets in terms of tourism dollars in the immediate future, we do see [Kazakhstan] as a potential stopover destination to Europe and the rest of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] region,” he stressed.

Air Astana also have an internal unit called “Air Astana Holiday” offering stopover packages for |US$1 at an international-standard four-star hotel with transfer service in Almaty – the former capital city – on top of booking airfare for transit flights, for example, long-haul Bangkok-London flights.

Due to some limitations at Almaty airport, Air Astana is planning to increase transit passenger traffic at Astana International Airport. Air Astana’s CEO said the airline aimed to increase flights from/to Astana. By the end of 2019, traffic at Astana would surge to 55 per cent from 45 per cent now, while traffic at Almaty would slide to 45 per cent from 55 per cent. 

In line with this, the state-run airport authority is expanding a |new terminal to handle an additional 4.7 million from the current capacity of 3.8 million passengers a |year to reach more than 8.2 million passengers a year after its soft opening next April. This means the new terminal will be ready to serve delegates and tourist arrivals for Expo 2017, which will be hosted by Astana. 

According to Air Astana’s forecast, approximately 100,000 international travellers are expected to arrive by air in Kazakhstan during the Expo period. 

Paolo Ricciotti, chairman of the board of Astana International Airport, said the expansion had cost approximately 60 billion tenge – Bt6.12 billion, while the project would create at least 200 additional jobs. 

Meanwhile, the new terminal was expected to reach full capacity within the next six or seven years, Ricciotti added.

He said Expo 2017 would be a game changer for the aviation in-dustry in Astana because after |the Expo ends, the site will be converted into a financial centre for Central Asia, which would help attract more business visitors to the city.

Speaking about promotion plans to attract international airlines to operate connecting flights in Astana, the airport chairman said the charges would be lower than in Almaty. But incentive schemes in this regard were not allowed by the government, he admitted.