Central Asia’s biggest state will also launch flights to New York, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo in 2024-2025, said Kazakh Minister of Transport Marat Karabayev at a December 19 government meeting.
Air Asia, the Malaysian multinational low-cost airline, will start operating flights on the Almaty-Kuala Lumpur route from March 14 next year. It also plans to operate flights to Jeddah using the fifth degree of freedom of air.
Air carriers currently operate flights out of Kazakhstan to 110 destinations in 28 countries (567 flights per week). Over the past two years, 32 international air routes have been opened to Abu Dhabi, Doha, Kuwait, and Milan.
This year, six foreign airlines were entitled to operate flights to several airports in Kazakhstan without restrictions on frequencies and aircraft types. The measure also includes the fifth freedom of the air, the right to carry passengers and cargo between two countries where neither is the home base of the airline operating it.
At the beginning of this year, the ministry’s Civil Aviation Committee extended the open sky aviation policy for five years to December 26, 2027.
