In 2018, the airline increased passenger traffic on international routes by 11%. In particular, passenger traffic to / from Ukraine increased by 19% compared with the previous year, it's more than 113 thousand passengers or 3% of the total passenger traffic of the airline.
At the end of 2018, the transit traffic of the airline grew by 47.8% compared with a year earlier. At the same time, the transit flow to/from Ukraine through Kazakhstan increased by 21% compared with a year earlier, and amounted to over 53 thousand passengers or 7.4% of the total transit traffic of the airline as a whole. The most popular destinations for the residents of Ukraine were India, Uzbekistan, Thailand, China and South Korea.
Richard Ledger, vice president of marketing and sales, said: “Ukraine is becoming an increasingly important market for the airline, not only because of direct flights from Kyiv to Almaty and Kyiv to Nur-Sultan, but also because of a number of key route of Air Astana .” Air Astana's services are attractive not only for business passengers, but also for tourist trips, student trips, meetings with friends and relatives, and we are pleased that Ukrainians choose us as a trusted and permanent partner. ”
Air Astana provides convenient transit routes from Ukraine to the cities of Central, Southeast Asia and India. Currently, there are direct flights from Kyiv to Almaty 7 times a week, and to Nur-Sultan - 3 times, with further increases up to 15 flights a week to Almaty and Nur-Sultan. Flights to Kyiv are performed on Airbus A321ceo and А320neo aircraft, as well as Embraer-190. The duration of the flight Kyiv - Almaty is 4 hours 50 minutes, Kyiv - Nur-Sultan - 4 hours. The airline began operating flights to Ukraine in the spring of 2013.