Air Astana’s new leader on US routes, Dreamliner order and future growth

Ibrahim Canliel took over the reins at Air Astana on April 1, 2026, succeeding, as CEO, Peter Foster, who had led the Kazakh carrier for more than two decades.

The handover was planned well in advance, with the airline making the announcement six months earlier in October 2025. However, Canliel is hardly a newcomer. He joined Air Astana in 2003, barely a year after the airline’s first flight, and held a number of senior commercial roles before serving as Chief Financial Officer from 2017.

Canliel has inherited the top role in an airline that has become one of Central Asia’s most prominent corporate success stories. A success he helped build from the ground up.

In early October 2026, AeroTime travelled to Air Astana’s headquarters in Almaty to meet Canliel and find out what the leadership change means. At the time of interview, the airline was preparing to take delivery of its first Boeing 787 Dreamliners and launch flights to the United States.

Leveraging proximity to the mega-markets

While the long–awaited launch of US services was just weeks away, Canliel began the conversation by highlighting how some other large markets, much closer geographically to Air Astana’s Central Asia home, have driven notable growth for the airline.

“India is only three hours 20 minutes from Almaty, and that enables us to operate double daily frequencies and feed into our network,” he said. “And it’s not only network traffic. We also see strong increasing demand thanks to the visa-free regime for citizens of India.”

He continued: “If we look at the map, China is an important part of it [growth]. We have long been the largest international airline in Urumqi (URC) [the largest city in Xinjiang, China’s Westernmost region – ed. note]. Do you know how far or close Urumqi is from our Almaty hub? It’s one hour and 20 minutes. It’s shorter than our Almaty (ALA) to Astana (NQZ) flagship route. If someone wants to fly to or from Urumqi, the options are to fly to Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou, and then fly all the way to Europe, or do a quick hop to Almaty and get to Europe with Air Astana.”

Providing additional context about the size of this opportunity, Canliel pointed out that while the entire population of Kazakhstan is 20 million, the Xinjiang region alone is home to 27 million.

“One and a half times the population of our entire country is in just one catchment area, which is one hour 20 minutes away,” he said.

As soon as the Middle East, which previously represented around 15% of the airline’s international capacity, plunged into turmoil in early 2026, Air Astana strengthened its pivot towards the east.

“The vast majority of the recovery was with China,” Canliel said. “Southeast Asia is an important part of it as well, and there we operate to Vietnam, with destinations such as Da Nang (DAD), Phu Quoc (PQC), and Nha Trang (CXR). And obviously, our flagship routes to Bangkok (BKK) and Phuket (HKT), where we hold a very strong foothold.”

“Of course, the single biggest strength in our network remains our Central Asian focus, because in this region we are the leader,” he explained. “We are one and a half times our second closest competitor, in terms of passenger numbers and fleet size. At the same time, we are even prouder of the fact that we are the airline that sets the benchmark in our region. Now, of course, we cannot be complacent.”

During the second half of 2026, Air Astana has been reinforcing its eastern foothold with the launch of new routes to Langkawi (LGK), Malaysia, and the start of a new service linking Almaty to Tokyo Narita (NRT) in November.

Canliel also highlighted that Air Astana’s well-established position allows it to offer the sort of frequencies that reinforce this leadership position.

“When you have that type of connectivity, double daily Tbilisi, triple daily Tashkent, double daily Bishkek, and then on top of that FlyArystan, which operates to Kutaisi, Samarkand and Urgench and connects to the network,” he said. “That gives significant strength. Nobody else in the West can match our product. If you’re coming from Asia, say from Bangkok, into the region, and you were to fly through Istanbul or the Gulf, you’d have to backtrack significantly.”

Geography is destiny

Air Astana also aims to continue leveraging geography to its advantage. In this regard, the conflict in the Middle East, which temporarily restricted operations at the main hubs in the region, syphoned an unexpected volume of traffic through Air Astana’s network, as travelers sought new ways to travel between Europe and Asia. Canliel acknowledged that while temporary, that surge allows many travelers to discover the Central Asian transit corridor.

“The other beautiful thing is that because of our location right in the heart of Eurasia, with the A321LR and the third ACT [additional center tank] fitted to our aircraft [alongside Airbus, Air Astana added extra fuel tanks to some of its aircraft for additional range – ed. note], we can enjoy narrowbody economics to London and all the way to Seoul, Tokyo and Southeast Asia,” Canliel said. “If we see the demand is there, we have the option of adding capacity with widebody operations in the future. But when the demand is not yet there, or if we want to build frequencies, we can do that with narrowbody aircraft in a way that makes it impossible for anyone else to compete on those routes.”

“Being at that intersection of 40% of the global population, whereby you can reach more than three billion people in less than two to three hours of flying, is an amazing position to be in,” he continued. “Whatever money you have on Earth, whether you are a Gulf carrier, an airline from China, or from Europe, that is a position that you simply cannot match and cannot buy.”

“It’s a strategic competitive advantage and that has put us in a good place,” he added, before going on to share that, in the first half of 2026, Air Astana grew its traffic towards China and India by 93% and 41%, respectively, while Southeast Asia grew by 12%.

“Of course, visa-free regimes are helpful,” he explained. “We have a bilateral visa-free regime in place with China, which is a mega market. With 90% plus growth in available seat kilometers, and doubling the number of destinations that we offer in China within 18 months, the response has been extremely strong.”

Canliel also remarked that while most of these developments were already in the airline’s strategic vision, the Middle East crisis has brought forward some initiatives that were initially planned for 2028, 2029, and even 2030.

In its home market, Air Astana counts on its low-cost subsidiary, FlyArystan, to continue stimulating demand, in great part from people who have never flown before. Since FlyArystan started flying in 2018, the Kazakh population’s propensity for travel has tripled, from 0.24 trips per capita per year to 0.76. Canliel expressed his confidence that this figure will continue to grow.

“If we look at economies with similar GDP per capita, we should be somewhere between one and a half and two trips per capita per annum,” he said. “So, we are looking double or triple the growth before we reach that saturated level. We are still very far from that point.”

The vastness of Kazakhstan, a country the size of Western Europe where a cross-country train journey can take nearly 40 hours, is another factor that supports air travel demand.

“Once a person gets on a plane, I think it will be very difficult to convince him or her to go back to the train, Canliel said.

The downside, he continued, is that Kazakhstan’s home market of only 20 million people, is relatively small. Because of this, Canliel is thinking in regional terms.

“When we draw the boundaries slightly around Kazakhstan and include Central Asia and the Caucasus, including Uzbekistan, which has about 36 million people, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, which is just across the mountains from us, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, we are suddenly looking at a market of 100 million people,” he said. “That’s the extended home market that we are looking at. And for these other markets in Central Asia and the Caucasus, the propensity for travel is a fraction of that of Kazakhstan.”

He added: “We see great opportunities to connect those markets with our rapidly expanding network, as well as the frequencies that we offer.”

Arrival of B787s and launch of US routes

At the time of this interview, and after repeated delays which have kept pushing back the delivery date, Air Astana was also preparing to receive the first of its Boeing 787-9 aircraft.

The arrival of these brand-new long-haul aircraft will allow the airline to retire its veteran B767s and launch the nonstop scheduled services between Kazakhstan and the United States.

“We will be using the Dreamliners at low utilization for about two months, doing a lot of short-sector flying, so that they can get certified. The 767s will start going out, and we are on track to launch the flights to the US in the second half of 2027,” Canliel explained, adding that the first of these three Dreamliners is scheduled for December 2026, the second for January 2027, and the third for August 2027.

“The 787s will effectively replace the 767s,” he said. “The capability profile is different, but the mission itself that it will serve at Air Astana is largely similar, with a bigger capacity.”

Air Astana’s first destination in the US will be New York John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), a route that will be first operated twice a week. Air Astana’s Dreamliners will be fitted with a two-cabin configuration, including what Canliel defined as a “a very high-end business class”.

Canliel also doesn’t rule out adding other US destinations in the longer term, particularly as Air Astana ordered another 15 B787s (five firm orders, five options and five purchase rights) in February 2026.

“JFK is a start, of course, but we have much lower-hanging fruit in the region, especially when you have two neighbors which both have 1.4 to 1.5 billion people,” he said. “When you have a dense network of multiple cities with dense frequencies feeding into our main hub, we can be much more confident in introducing longer-haul routes into Europe, the Americas, or other parts of the world.”

Geopolitics has also interfered with the airline’s US plans. Since Air Astana does not fly in Russian airspace, for now it plans to operate this route with a reduced payload.

“There are two options,” Canliel said. “One would be a reduced payload, and the other could be, if we get the relief to fly via Russia, that will shorten the route by about two hours, and then there would not be a payload restriction.

“New York with a technical stop somewhere else makes no sense. It’s not that attractive. It doesn’t make sense economically, and it doesn’t make sense from a competitive position perspective. It significantly dilutes the product.”

“The whole point of doing the operation is to address the demand from Kazakhstan, from the extended home market, and the mega markets around us,” he added.

This factor also limits Air Astana’s growth opportunities in Europe, since avoiding Russian airspace also adds one and a half to two hours of flying time in that direction.

“That’s additional cost, not necessarily accompanied by additional revenues, and that makes expansion into Europe more challenging,” Canliel explained. “Having said that, when we open all those routes in Central Asia and the Caucasus and in the other Asian markets, that provides more feed opportunities for any Western routes. If that were to change in the near future, that would significantly impact our plans for the network, especially the European network.”

The succession

Canliel took over the position of head of the airline following Peter Foster’s decision to retire in 2025. So, what does this management change represent for the airline’s strategic direction?

“The message that the board gave was that they were voting in favor of continuity of management,” Canliel said. “It was extremely important for our people that there was no uncertainty about whether we were going to have the same values, the same culture as we go forward into the future.”

“Our founding shareholders established three key principles which are still our guiding principles today. These are, first, that we are committed to the highest global standards for operational safety and service,” he said. “Second, that we are committed to complying with best practices for corporate governance. That’s both for transparency, the way that we operate, and particularly for our people, the continuation of meritocracy.

“The third one is financial independence, which is driven by the strength of the balance sheet and gives us the independence to take the decisions that are right for the company, its employees and its stakeholders, and not to be driven by any other agenda.”

Canliel reaffirmed the airline’s commitment to these principles.

“On the values where we are absolutely uncompromising, and that was a very important message that the board gave to all of the stakeholders of the company,” he said “With Peter [Foster], we had a six-month transition. We have been working shoulder to shoulder with Peter for more than 20 years. So, there wasn’t a great need to ask, ‘well, what would you do here? What would you do there?’ It was a process that was not turbulent for either of us.”

“Most importantly, for our people it was a reaffirmation that the culture in which they have committed to develop their careers is not going to change, while we remain very agile on anything that is outside of the three key principles.”

“Peter took the airline from an infant stage to a mature stage. The foundation is extremely strong. I had the privilege of taking over a very different Air Astana from the one Peter had taken on 20 years ago, as a person who’s been inside for a long time, understanding the business, and then being tasked by the board of directors to take it to the next level,” Canliel said. “And my test started a month before the day that I took over, and I think we’ve been doing well on that, as the evolution shows.”

Pratt & Whitney engine issues

Besides a complex geopolitical environment in some of the regions where it operates, Air Astana has also dealt with technical issues affecting Pratt & Whitney engines worldwide.

“It’s been a focus area for us. We had well over 10 unscheduled engine removals last summer. We had a very difficult summer in 2025,” Canliel said. “We have had to carry a much higher than usual ratio of spare engines. At the moment we are running 26 spare engines on 43 aircraft, so 86 engines are flying. That’s more than 30% spares.

“Typically, you would run at eight to 10% on a mature engine, and some airlines may stretch it to 10 to 12%, but it would be nowhere near that,”Canliel said, adding this has led the airline to reassess the number of spares it keeps in inventory. “We don’t mind investing in engines that we know we are going to need in the future when we expand the fleet if that enables us to keep aircraft in the air during this period. I think we would be looking at something around a 10 to 12% spare ratio, and as it matures, we might drop it to single digits.

Here, Canliel outlined the measures the carrier has been implementing to deal with engine-related groundings.

“We mitigated by committing to and acquiring spare engines in the early days. We took on board five additional A320ceos to cater for capacity growth, both for Air Astana and FlyArystan, and we did a lot of engine resting, grounding aircraft during the time that we know demand is going to be low, and this requires millimetric planning by the engineering team,” he said. “They look at the forecast of how the engines are expected to behave, how many cycles they’re going to have, reserving the limited number of hours or cycles that we have to operate during the peak season, and, as a result, this summer we had 60%fewer groundings than last year.”

Canliel added that Air Astana’s team has been actively engaging with the senior management at Pratt & Whitney.

“So as a combination of more spare engines, better engine support from Pratt & Whitney, and particularly a higher number of inductions, we have seen a very significant positive change in the outlook for aircraft groundings,” Canliel said. “We have already declared that for next summer’s peak, we are looking at zero groundings with Pratt & Whitney. That’s a significant turnaround, and it should help us overcome some of the unit cost challenges. Because when you take on all of these engines, of course, they have a cost impact as well, and if you’re growing, that’s manageable.”

Air Astana is also looking to have more engine inductions.

“We see that capacity for engine inductions is increasing. There is less pressure on the supply chain, and then, of course, the larger number of engines that we have, and the engine resting program also contribute,” he said. “But in terms of ranking, I think it would be inductions, engines, and the resting program.”

Canliel said he expected that the new GTF Advantage engine would become the standard for future deliveries.

“We would love to have those engines fitted on the aircraft that we acquire as soon as possible. I think they were talking about the end of 2027 and 2028, and we would love to have those engines fitted on our aircraft because we are led to believe that it’s a significant improvement,” he said. “We may want to run our existing engines through the improvement program as well, and I think Pratt would be interested in that too, because it would give them higher reliability across the global fleet. I trust they would like to have us as a happy rather than an unhappy customer.”

“What you want is to fly aircraft,” Canlie said, adding that it becomes “particularly disruptive when you plan for a production increase”.

“In 2025, we did plan for a production increase and then had to scale it back because of unscheduled engine removals,” he said. “But you still have the pilots, the cabin crew, the engineers, the staff, the back office planned as if you were going for full production. So, it’s been very painful.”

“I think the fact that we are starting to see positive signals from Pratt is encouraging, so that we can at least start getting back to normal production,” he continued. “We see light at the end of the tunnel.”

Nevertheless, Canliel closed our discussion about engine issues on a positive note.

“What we see, and this is not just for Air Astana but generally for the industry, is improving reliability,” he said. “Some of the parts were removed at 3,000 hours in the earlier days. Now you move to 6,000 to 9,000, and maybe some other airlines have, depending on the environment, eight to 10,000 hours on wing.”

Future plans: committed to growth and investment in people

So, what is next for Air Astana? Canliel intends to continue strengthening Air Astana’s position as the regional leader and is not concerned about other countries in the region, namely Uzbekistan, which has seen considerable investment into its commercial aviation sector in recent years.

“Other airlines want to take over our leading position. But equally, we are committed to maintaining our high growth, to increasing the gap in terms of the services that we offer to our customers, and to widening the gap with our competition,” Canliel said. “They can buy the same aircraft, they can buy the same seat that we are taking, which they are doing effectively.”

“But there’s one thing they cannot simply buy and copy, which is the people element. We invest a significant amount into our training, maintaining our soft skills within the continuous improvement program,” he said. “That is a strength that will take quite a long time for anyone to copy and paste, and, at the same time, we continue investing heavily in our people to ensure that we widen that gap.”

Canliel also outlined three factors that underpin Air Astana’s continued success.

First is the competitive unit cost, both for Air Astana and FlyArystan.

“FlyArystan is another 30% lower than Air Astana, so that places us at a price point where we can operate and where others would be making losses,” he said. “Besides the very attractive costs, we are also very confident in our product. We are continuously investing in it, and I think people do appreciate a strong product when they fly, especially on flights over four or five hours. The third one is connectivity.”

“If I combine all three, very competitive cost, which addresses any price elasticity, a very strong product, which addresses the expectations of the customers, and then the strong connectivity that the others do not have, and which takes both time and money to build, I’m very confident,” he continued. “We believe in growing markets, stimulating demand, and we are confident in our competitive advantage.”

Air Astana expects to fuel its further growth with the arrival of new aircraft, expanding its fleet significantly over the coming years. In 2025, the airline placed an order for up to 50 Airbus A320 family aircraft (both A320neo and A321neo aircraft, including LRs, 25 firm and 25 options) in addition to the previously mentioned 15 Boeing 787-9s ordered from Boeing. Deliveries for these A320 family aircraft will start in 2031, while those for the new batch of 787s (additional to the initial three) will begin in 2032, with deliveries expected to run through 2035 and 2036.

“If you hear the ambitions that we have, it’s evident that we would be looking at much more than that. Our targeted fleet size by the end of 2030 is already 86,” Canliel said. “Some of these aircraft will be replacements, and we are currently assessing whether we want to use them as replacements or growth aircraft, or a combination of the two. But we are already committed to having another 23 aircraft joining the fleet over the next four years.”

“All aircraft for 2026, 2027, and 2028 are already sourced and committed,” he added. “We are in discussions for 2029 and 2030, and possible revisions based on the demand that we see could be implemented for those years.”

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