OREANDA-NEWS. On 17 February 2009 was announced, that 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.

In the field of operations, Air Astana successfully completed the IATA Operation Safety Audit in 2008 and also established an ab-intio pilot training scheme. Other achievements during the year were the opening of a new aircraft maintenance hangar in Almaty, the 100% implementation of electronic ticketing and the opening of a new reservations centre in Astana. New general sales agents were appointed for Hong Kong / China and Australia / New Zealand.