Kazakhstan’s flag carrier Air Astana and ENGINEERING Holding have reached an agreement on repainting the operator’s narrowbody aircraft at the S7 ENGINEERING paint centre at Mineralnyye Vody airport.

The contract between Air Astana and S7 ENGINEERING, an ENGINEERING Holding company, was signed in early November and will remain in force for six years. The airline had selected the service provider through an open tender that involved a dozen bidders, including leading European and Chinese organisations.

The number of aircraft to be repainted by the ENGINEERING Holding paint team will depend on Air Astana’s technical maintenance programme.

The carrier currently operates approximately 30 narrowbody airliners. Air Astana has successfully used the service of S7 ENGINEERING’s paint centre before: in 2016, the Mineralnyye Vody facility repaired two of the operator’s aircraft (a Boeing 757-200 and an Airbus A321) under its own EASA Part 145 certificate.

“As always, the main factor of our victory became the relation between the price and speed of painting for each of the aircraft discussed, which proved very advantageous to the customer,” commented Stanislav Mitin, senior sales manager at ENGINEERING Holding. “Another plus for S7 Engineering was Air Astana’s positive experience with the previous two aircraft painting projects, which had been performed to high quality standards, on time, and had been highly praised by the customer’s senior management.”

Long-term cooperation between Air Astana and ENGINEERING Holding will further improve the planning quality and utilization efficiency at S7 ENGINEERING’s Mineralnyye Vody paint facility.

“The painting slots will be agreed on over six months in advance, which will allow us enough time to work out comprehensive solutions that would be maximally beneficial for both parties,” Mitin noted. “We hope that this project will attract the interest of other Kazakh airlines by demonstrating to them the quality of the Mineralnyye Vody paint centre’s work.”