Congratulations on your recent promotion Slingsby, hope you do better than the last guy. But your talk of fleet plans is a little off I believe. Like your previous mention of A330s! In fact the B757 winglet mod will be in 2009 if approved, to coincide with the next maintenance C checks. You should know that! And the company has been OFFERED more 757s on very favourable terms, it is not looking for more. Of course if the money and business is there it would be crazy not to snap them up. But at present consolidation is the name of the game, expansion plans are on hold. B767 plans are for one aircraft in 2009 and another in 2010, but this is dependent on what is available at the time.
The Airbus fleet disposition has changed recently and the GUW base has been put off until next year at the earliest. Plans were to base an A319 and extra A320 at TSE this summer but now only one will go there, the other remaining in ALA. This is because upgrading of F50 routes from TSE has been deferred due to concerns on load factors.
Meanwhile the airline has recently been evaluating CRJ700, EMB170 and Q400 types as Fokker 50 replacements and for expansion into surrounding CIS countries. These would be for 2010 delivery onwards and the favourite so far is the CRJ700.
So once the current management and financial problems are behind them Air Astana should indeed be expanding.
