Air Astana Group reported an after-tax profit of $78.4 million in 2022, reporting a strong recovery in an attempt to position itself as a new hub for East-West route. The airline posted a revenue of $1.03 bn and flew around 7.35 million passengers. The airline had reported a 36.1 million after-tax profit in 2021.
Following the reopening of China border and Western sanctions on Russia, the airline is expanding its network to meet increasing demand.
Air Astana ceased flights to Russia post the Russia-Ukraine war. With the airline’s base at Almaty International Airport and scheduled flights from Astana's Nursultan Nazarbayev International Airport, located to the south of Russia helped the airline in network growth.
Several of Air Astana's longer flights flew over a significant portion of Russian airspace and had to be redirected or re-evaluated.
Speaking to Reuters, Peter Foster, CEO, Air Astana said: “Prior to the start of the war in Ukraine, a lot of traffic in general, going in the western direction, whether that was to Europe or to the US, was traveling from this region via the Russian Federation. Obviously, that is no longer the case. And what has happened is there has been a shift of gravity and we are extremely well placed to take advantage of that shift."
The CEO further confirmed that any loss of revenue caused due to closure of Russian airspace was compensated by increased capacity to Europe, Asia, India and Caucasus destinations.
Air Astana launched new flights to Heraklion in Greece and Bodrum in Turkey. Air Astana also resumed services from Almaty to Chengdu and Beijing and from Nursultan to Bejing on its Airbus A321LRs.
FlyArystan resumed services from Aktau to Baku, Istanbul, and Dubai. From Shymkent, the airline restarted services to Dubai and Kutaisi in Georgia.
In 2022, the airline added its 10th A321LR and has plans to integrate more fuel-efficient aircraft. The carrier aims to increase its fleet to 50 aircraft by the end of this year, up from its current total of 44. The airline is expecting the delivery of its first B787 Dreamliner in 2025.