Air Astana Record 8pct Growth

WASHINGTON. March 13. KAZINFORM. Air Astana, the flag carrier of the Republic of Kazakhstan, continued to achieve growth in 2008, 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 Air Astana fleet grew to 21 aircraft during the year following the delivery of three additional Airbus A320 family aircraft. The airline confirmed orders for six A320 family aircraft, with the fleet on track to grow to 34 aircraft in 2014 and 63 by 2022. The operational fleet currently comprises of 2 Boeing 767, 4 Boeing 757, 2 Airbus A321, 7 A320, 1 A319 and 5 Fokker 50. Additional aircraft capacity enabled Air Astana to increase frequencies on domestic trunk routes from both Astana and Almaty, whilst international service frequencies were increased to Bangkok, Frankfurt, Istanbul and Moscow. A new service was launched to Bishkek, the capital Kyrgyzstan and Urumqi, market town of China. Air Astana also awarded by Skytrax with ?3 Star Airline?. The Official 3 Star Airline® ranking signifies a satisfactory standard of core Product for most travel categories. Air Astana is a Quality Approved Airline valid to February 2010; Kazakh Embassy in the USA informs referring to Travel News Gazette.