Conditions at Air Astana
@ Jasmin:
I am a little surprised at your statement that previous posts which contain warnings about this airline are "spoiled". Either you are so new to Air Astana that you really don't know or, you are a local pilot, in which your statement would be even more surprising as most locals, given the chance, would have nothing good to say about the airline, in fact, most of the ethnic Russian pilots are just waiting to get their Russian citizenship ( the first 2 have now left) and many of the others are working on JAR licenses so they have the option to try elsewhere. If you are an ab initio, well, then its understandable.
As for the punitive atmosphere which now pervades the airline, that is absolutely true. One unstable approach means one week, NO PAY, two and you're fired! Stabilized at 1500 IMC and 1000 VMC. The number of go- arounds has risen steeply. Every single flight is evaluated in Almaty so you will be caught.
The interesting thing about this is and other shenanigans (the list is too to long to post here) is that none of this is mentioned in the contract.
So, as I have said before, do your homework before deciding to come to Air Astana, if you have all the facts and you can live with them, then that is OK.