CEO who raised FlyArystan’s revenue by 384% resigns

Adrian Hamilton-Manns has worked for FlyArystan since 2020 / Collage by Kursiv.media

According to Air Astana, Managing Director of FlyArystan Adrian Hamilton-Manns has decided to leave the company and return to South Africa to spend more time with his family.

To ensure executive staff changes are smooth, Hamilton-Manns will stay in FlyArystan until the end of May. Meanwhile, Richard Ledger is going to serve as the acting head of the airline.

From 2009 to 2017, Ledger served as Sales Director at Air Astana; from 2017 to 2022, he was the vice president for marketing and sales at the company. As Air Astana reported, Ledger’s expertise helped the company boost its revenue by 58%, from $646.8 million in 2008 to $1 billion in 2022. Currently, Ledger is supervising Air Astana’s activities in the U.K., Europe and the U.S. from London.

Hamilton-Manns joined FlyArystan in 2020. While he was the executive director, the company’s revenue rose by 384% from $57 million in 2020 to $277 million in 2023, which has made FlyArystan one of the fastest-growing airlines in the world.

According to President and CEO of Air Astana Peter Foster, he and his colleagues were sorry to hear about Adrian’s decision to leave the company. However, they fully understand that this tough decision was motivated by his desire to be closer to his family in South Africa. «Starting in 2020, FlyArystan has grown from a startup into an airline with 19 aircraft, demonstrating significant growth of revenue and geographical reach. We are grateful to Adrian for all those achievements the airline reached over the past four years of his leadership and wish him all the best in the future,» he said.

Foster also highlighted that the current acting executive director of FlyArystan Richard Ledger has contributed a lot to the sustainable growth of Air Astana, including its rapid rebounding after the COVID-19 pandemic and transforming the company into an airline relying on itself rather than on support from the government or shareholders.

At the beginning of the year, FlyArystan was removed from the composition of its parent company Air Astana and became a separate legal entity. In April, the low-cost carrier obtained its own air operator’s certificate.

In February 2024, Air Astana raised $120 million through its IPO. As of today, the state-owned holding Samruk Kazyna controls 41% of the airline’s shares, Citibank (nominee shareholder) – 24.6%, British BAE Systems – 16.95% and the United Accumulative Pension Fund – 6.51%.