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Air Astana flies further in Eurasia skies
ALMATY – 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 neighbouring countries.
The airline recently launched 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 has 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.
Despite challenging conditions in 2008, Air Astana continued to achieve growth and profitability, with available seat kilometres up by 16 percent to 7.5 billion compared to 2007.
Passengers carried increased by eight percent 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.
Ian Jarrett
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