Air Astana, the national carrier of Kazakhstan, recently celebrated 13 years of its operation in India. Air Astana commenced operations to India in 2004 with flights between Almaty and New Delhi and currently operates 10 flights between Kazakhstan and India each week, including a daily service between Almaty and New Delhi and three frequencies between Astana and New Delhi.
“India is an important destination on Air Astana’s network. We are proud to have played a significant role in connecting business as well as leisure passengers from Kazakhstan to India over the past 13 years. In addition, Air Astana is proud to add New Delhi to our growing network of flights to global capitals. New Delhi is a great new destination for us and we expect to carry both business travellers and holidaymakers between the two capitals, and also between India and cities in Russia and other countries on our network to and from Astana,” Peter Foster, President and Chief Executive Officer of Air Astana, said.
In July this year, Air Astana launched direct flights from Astana to New Delhi. The three-times weekly service currently operates using Airbus A320 and Embraer 190 aircraft. The carrier’s plans for the future will see an increase in the number of Astana–New Delhi flights from three to five times a week. Air Astana is also exploring the opportunity of launching new flights from Kazakhstan to other cities in India.
Travel between the two countries continues to grow. The total number of passengers carried between Kazakhstan and India during 2017 reached 43 459, an increase of 43 per cent compared with 2016.
Furthermore, Air Astana offers its passenger travelling via Almaty convenient connections to other international destinations such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, Istanbul, Tbilisi and Bishkek. As a result the number of transit passengers travelling from New Delhi via Almaty to other international destinations grew by 33% year-over-year in 2016.
