FlyArystan carried 700,581 passengers on more than 4,000 operated flights in just 8 months from its launch on May 1stuntil 31st December 2019. FlyArystan's load factor over the same May to December period was 94%, with the ontime performance of flights over the same period being more than 90%.
FlyArystan commenced operations with 2 A320 aircraft in May 2019 with those aircraft based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. In October and December, 2 additional A320 aircraft were added with a new aircraft base in the capital Nur-Sultan commencing at that time. FlyArystan finished the year with 13 routes to a total of 10 destinations. FlyArystan started its first international service in December 2019 with service from Nur-Sultan to Zhukovsky (Moscow).
Zhanar Zhailauova, Sales and Marketing Director said “2019 was an exceptional start for FlyArystan. The people of Kazakhstan embraced our low fares and took to the skies in great numbers. I’m very pleased to say that many thousands of our customers were flying for the first time, with also 1 in 9 of our customers being children. Now whilst we are a young airline what was equally impressive was the large numbers of elderly customers who were also flying with us with 1 in 12 of our customers of pensioner age. We wanted to be an airline for the people and we have certainly made great strides in that regard in 2019.”
She continued “The significant growth in passenger numbers across all airports where we operate in Kazakhstan is testament that people will fly if it is more affordable for them to do so. On average across all the airports we operate the average domestic passenger growth was 38% over the May – December period versus the previous year. In the last quarter of the year that domestic growth rate increased to a staggering 60% versus the prior year. That is a very encouraging start as we continue to grow in 2020. Kazakhstan is already one of the fastest growing domestic aviation markets in the world and we would expect that to continue as we also continue our growth in 2020.”
Head of FlyArystan, Tim Jordan added “We shall be growing our fleet from 4 to 10 aircraft in 2020. That will certainly allow us to continue our rapid growth and to bring our low fares and new routes to many more cities across Kazakhstan and the Central Asian region. We will also be opening at least 2 new aircraft bases in both Karaganda and Aktobe in 2020 and we look forward to adding more in the future. FlyArystan has had a great start to operations in 2019 thanks to the support that we have received from our partners, our customers and of course the fantastic FlyArystan team. We are certainly very encouraged by our early progress and we are looking forward to delivering even more growth in Kazakhstan and the region in 2020 and beyond.”
Low-cost airline FlyArystan is a division of Air Astana, based in Almaty and awarded the rating of 4-star airline for the quality of service, as well as the award "Best Airline in Central Asia and India" according to Skytrax World Airline Awards. By 2022, it is planned to increase the FlyArystan fleet to at least 15 aircraft. FlyArystan was recognized as “The Best Deal of the Year” according to the Kazakhstan Growth Forum 2019.