Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan set to increase number of flights
By Kamila Aliyeva
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan will increase the number of flights.
The relevant agreement was concluded in Astana by Chairman of the Civil Aviation Committee of the Ministry of Investment and Development of Kazakhstan Talgat Lustaev and Deputy Head of the Uzbek State Inspectorate for Supervision over Safety of Operations Oleg Lim, the Civil Aviation Committee of the Ministry of Investment and Development of Kazakhstan said in a message.
“The agreement aims to increase the number of flights on the existing Astana-Tashkent route from 4 to 6 flights a week and on the Almaty-Tashkent route from 7 to 10 flights a week. In total, the designated airlines of the two countries are now able to carry out 32 bilateral flights a week,” the ministry said.
The airlines of the two countries are also expected to sign a commercial codeshare agreement on mutually beneficial terms.
A codeshare agreement is an aviation business arrangement where two or more airlines share the same flight. Sharing, in this sense, means that each airline publishes and markets the flight under its own airline designator and flight number as part of its published timetable or schedule.
The sides also agreed that the already achieved results will contribute to the development of tourism, economic and trade ties, as well as, to reaching a new level of cooperation between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in the aviation sphere.
Earlier, Kazakhstan’s largest airline, Air Astana, announced plans to expand its route network to Uzbekistan.
“In addition to the existing routes Almaty-Tashkent and Astana-Tashkent, we plan to open new routes, such as Samarkand-Almaty, Bukhara-Almaty, Bukhara-Astana next year,” regional representative of the Kazakh airline Yevgeniy Krutov said in late 2017.
Both countries previously agreed to work on increasing the trade turnover to $3 billion in 2018 and to $5 billion by 2020. As a result of 2017, the trade turnover between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan has increased by 30 percent to about $2 billion. Over 200 companies with Kazakh capital currently operate in Uzbekistan.
2018 is declared as the year of Uzbekistan in Kazakhstan whereas 2019 will be the year of Kazakhstan in Uzbekistan.
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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva
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