JUNE 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iran’s ATA Airlines flew to Azerbaijan for the first time, officially opening the new Tehran-Baku Tabriz route. The new route, which will operate twice weekly, is a sign of the growing importance of transport links between Azerbaijan and Iran. AZAL, Azerbaijan’s national carrier, also operates a direct flight to Tehran.
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(News report from Issue No. 286, published on June 24 2016)
JUNE 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Union published an updated list of banned airline companies, which included 19 Kazakh and 13 Kyrgyz companies. Airline safety is still below international safety standards in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, according to most aviation agencies. Air Astana, part-owned by British BAE Systems, is the only airline allowed to fly to the EU.
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(News report from Issue No. 286, published on June 24 2016)
JUNE 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Peter Foster, CEO of Kazakhstan’s flagship airline Air Astana, said the company will seek financial advisors this autumn to prepare an IPO in 2018. Mr Foster said that the company will list in Kazakhstan and in other more liquid markets, such as London or Singapore. Britain’s BAE Systems owns 49% of Air Astana, Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna owns 51%.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
MAY 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — SkyBus, a small airline in Kazakhstan, opened additional charter flights for the summer months from eight different Kazakh cities to the Georgian resort town of Batumi, on the Black Sea coast. Batumi is Georgia’s tourist hotspot and the new air link shows how popular it is becoming with ordinary Kazakhs.
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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)
MAY 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — State-owned company United Airports of Georgia said it had opened a tender for the construction of a new airport in the town of Zugdidi, 300km west of Tbilisi. The new airport, which will be built in the same location as the existing one, will service both domestic and international flights.
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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)
MAY 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — This year, Iran will increase exports of jet fuel to Armenia and Tajikistan, Iranian officials said. Last year, Iran exported jet fuel to Armenia. Although detailed numbers are not public, volumes amounted to a few thousand tonnes. In 2016, Iran added Tajikistan to the list of buyers, a sign of closer commercial relations with Dushanbe. Central Asia has been quick to try to pull Iran into its economic circle since sanctions were eased in February.
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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)
MAY 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s ministry of finance urged AZAL, the national airline, to start paying back its debts and cut costs. Finance minister Samir Sharifov said that in order to buy new aircrafts AZAL has accumulated over 650m manat ($450m) in state-guaranteed loans, which could become a burden to the state budget if AZAL becomes insolvent. Several state-owned and private companies in Azerbaijan have increased their borrowings as an economic downturn hits profits.
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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)
MAY 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s airline company Somon Air received a safety certificate (Operational Safety Audit, IOSA) from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the first Tajik carrier to comply with industry standards. Contacted by The Bulletin, IATA said that Somon Air has not yet applied for membership. Kazakhstan’s Air Astana and Uzbekistan Airways are the only two Central Asian IATA members.
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(News report from Issue No. 282, published on May 27 2016)
MAY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s flagship carrier Air Astana said Mongolia’s aviation authority had withdrawn permission to open a direct flight from Astana to Ulaanbaatar in June. The company said that the Mongolian aviation authority did not give a reason for unilaterally withdrawing permission to fly. A spat with the Russian aviation authority over the use of airspace had previously delayed the launch of the link. Officially, Air Astana denied that the two incidents were related.
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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)
MAY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The two coldest capital cities in the world will not be connected after all.
Air Astana postponed indefinitely the launch of a new link with Ulaanbaatar because of an ongoing spat between the Kazakh flagship carrier and the Mongolian civil aviation agency.
This can be easily dismissed as a hiccup in the business process, but there might be more to it.
Publicly, Air Astana said: “We had permission to start flights in March 2016. In April the CAAM [the Mongolian agency] unilaterally withdrew it without any valid grounds.”
Responding to a question from the Bulletin posted on Twitter, Air Astana said that the spat with Mongolia has nothing to do with the problems with Russia’s aviation agency, which left a Top Gear crew stranded in Moscow last year while a handful of flights were cancelled.
“It isn’t linked to Russia CAA,” the Air Astana tweet read.
But it’s hard to believe that the two incidents are not connected, since both happened in the same week and were cross-referenced by the Kazakh government when it addressed the issue. This might well be a case of international politics interfering with the business world in Central Asia.
But let’s take Air Astana’s version at face value. In this case, the spat with the Russian and Mongolian civil aviation agencies and the recent announcement that the launch of a connection to Tehran would be a triple setback for the company owned by the sovereign wealth fund Samruk- Kazyna (51%) and British BAE Systems (49%).
Maybe the bullish attitude of the previous months, boasting new routes and international agreements, is unjustified?
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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)