Monday, May 14, 2012 -
Kazakhstan’s flag carrier Air Astana on Saturday launched its first flight between the Kazakh and Uzbek capitals.
The Astana-Tashkent flight will now run twice a week, taking passengers between capitals on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
Air Astana is using Embraer-190 aircraft for the flights, which seat 97 people, nine seats of which are in business class.
The launch of the intraregional flight is a step forward for the airline and Central Asia, the airline’s regional manager for Uzbekistan said.
“The airline continues the development of a regional route network, particularly in Central Asia,” Serik Rys-Uly told the Kazinform.kz news agency.
The region’s transportation infrastructure is majorly underdeveloped, with very few air linkages between Central Asian states. Often, travelers will have to fly to regional hubs such as Moscow to fly between countries in the region.