Zhumagaliyev called for more competition at local airlines market

Kazakhstan Minister of Transport and Communications called for more competition at the local air carriage market, Tengrinews.kz reports. Askar Zhumagaliyev said at the board meeting of the Ministry on February 1 that he had considered complaints of MPs about the monopolist airline Aira Astana. “We would like to initiate a draft law to cancel the bidding system for distribution of local air routes. We will instead appoint air companies to fly to certain destinations. The choice will be governed by a company's compliance with qualification requirements. This will help us create competition at this local market and improve the quality of services,” Zhumagaliyev told First Deputy Prime-Minister Serik Akhmetov at the extended board meeting of the Ministry of Transport and Communications. Zhumagaliyev also said that he would work on removing Kazakhstan's airlines from ICAO’s blacklist. “This year we have to work on the remaining complains. There are 55 of them. We hope that we will be able to work with all the involved decision-makers of the civil aviation to make sure that our country's airlines are off the black list,” he said. He also promised to deal with delays of flights caused by airports. “We will hold an internal investigations and identify all the reasons behind each case of airports failure to provide their services. Of course this would not solve the problems with weather and the delays it causes. But we will try to eliminate the human factor that causes delays sometimes,” Minister assured. Flights to over 10 new destinations are expected to be launched. The plan is to launch flights from Astana to Baku, Tashkent and Ulan-Bator.