Air Astana reports a 9% increase in passenger traffic before its IPO

In 2023, Air Astana and its subsidiary Fly Arystan carried eight million passengers, an 8.8% increase, according to the airline’s corporate magazine Tengri, citing the company’s CEO Peter Foster.

The airline’s passenger traffic has broken the record for the second year in a row. According to Foster, the company wants to boost its fleet from 50 aircraft to 80 by 2028.

This year, the airline will launch new destinations such as Japan, Singapore and Malaysia. Last year, Foster said that Air Astana was planning to launch a new flight to New York in 2025 after purchasing a long-range aircraft. The company is also awaiting the opening of a new passenger terminal in the Almaty International Airport that will boost the traffic here by up to 14 million people.

Air Astana is supposed to go public in 2024, although this idea came up for the first time back in 2011. The company says that it was ready for an IPO in 2018, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced it to change this plan.

The air carrier has been on a list of quasi-state companies scheduled for privatization for several years. An IPO will likely happen this year. During President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s address to the nation in September 2023, he said that the airline must go public through the so-called People’s IPO. Under this scheme, the priority right for participating in such an IPO is given to citizens of Kazakhstan. In addition, before any IPO the airline must solve the issue with Fly Arystan, which is not an independent company and operates as a subsidiary of Air Astana.