An all-white Boeing 727-200 freighter was welcomed by water cannons in Turkistan airport in south Kazakhstan on the sunny morning of 23rd July, becoming the first aircraft of the type for the local airline start-up Alpha Sky and an important addition for cargo capacity for this Central Asian country.
Alpha Sky launched operations in 2023 with two Boeing 737-400 freighters which flew mostly outside the country. According to the carrier’s CEO Gulzhan Janibekova, the 32-year-old Boeing 757 will be used to deliver up to 60 tonnes of e-commerce deliveries from Hong Kong weekly under an agreement with the local post operator QazPost. The airline hopes to load the return flights from Kazakhstan with export goods. It also plans to add a Boeing 767 widebody freighter this year.
Any additional cargo capacity is likely to be welcomed by local forwarders as traffic in the country started to grow this year after some decline since the peak result of 33.7 thousand tonnes in 2021. In the first six months of this year, local carriers increased traffic by almost 9 percent, to 12.4 thousand tonnes, government statistics show.
However, most of the cargo is carried in the trunks of passenger aircraft, which limits the available capacities and destinations, the local forwarders complain. For foreign shipments, they have to look for available space on the transit foreign aircraft ,which make stops in the country on their flights between China and Europe.
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Kazakhstan’s government sees the country’s potential as a transit point between the East and the West, especially when overfly of Russia for Western airlines was interrupted after the invasion of Ukraine.
The authorities have defined four airports which will become regional hubs for both passenger and cargo traffic. The list includes Almaty, Shymkent and the capital Astana which are already the country’s largest cargo gateways, as well as Aktobe which is on the north of the country. They will develop necessary infrastructure, as well as special customs zones. Turkey’s logistics company S Sistem announced at the TIACA Silk Road in the Sky event in Astana in June that it will build a 30,000 sq m multimodal cargo terminal at Aktobe Airport.
Meanwhile, in June, private investors of Karaganda Airport announced their plans to turn it into another multimodal hub. The 60 percent of the gateway’s stake was bought by Timur Turlov, the head and founder of Freedom Holding financial group, in May. According to local media, the new owner plans to inject about US$270 million into the renovation of the runway and terminal and expansion of the cargo facilities in the airport.
The Karaganda airport is preparing to launch an affiliated cargo carrier, Altair Airlines, which will operate on routes from Kazakhstan to China. Similar efforts to launch new cargo airlines are being considered by the country’s National Welfare Fund Samruk Kazyna and Kazakhstan Railways.
Neighboring Uzbekistan is trying to become a transit hub en route from China to Europe. The country’s government liberalized the local air transport market a few years ago. This gave birth to new private carriers, which now compete with former government-owned monopolist Uzbekistan Airways.
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The latter operates two Boeing 767-300BSF freighters and plans to gradually convert other aircraft of the type from its fleet into cargo variants.
However, a privately-owned My Freighter unexpectedly became the country’s largest cargo carrier by fleet size. The company initially acted as general air cargo agent for Uzbekistan Airways. It launched independent operations with Boeing 747-200F in 2022 but later migrated to Boeing 767 freighters. The airline increased its fleet to five 767-300BCFs by leasing two aircraft of the type from Air Transport Services Group in early July.
After obtaining CCAR129 certification in May which permits operations to and from mainland China, My Freighter has recently launched new flights to three Chinese cities – Ezhou, Shenzhen, and Shijiazhuang.
In June, it announced an interline agreement with Spain’s Air Europa Cargo, which gave Uzbeki carrier access to destinations in the Americas, including Panama City, Cancun, Dominican Republic, Punta Cana, Columbia, Miami, New York, and Sao Paolo.
Another Uzbekistan cargo start-up, Fly Khiva, received EASA Third Country Operator approval on July 19. According to its commercial director Farhad Mukhutdinov, the carrier plans to start flying to Europe in August, including Riga, Liege, Warsaw and Paris. Its single Boeing 767-300F started commercial operations in June.
