Kazakh passenger barred from watching in-flight movies due to budget ticket

Tengrinews.kz - An unusual complaint about a well-known airline has gone viral online — and the airline has responded.

A man took to Threads to vent his frustration after being denied access to in-flight entertainment on a recent flight. While some social media users initially thought he was joking, the incident turned out to be true.

“We were moved from a FlyArystan flight to an Air Astana plane for unclear reasons. But we were told we couldn’t watch the movies because we had FlyArystan tickets. From what I understood, even the delay was because we were originally booked with FlyArystan,” he wrote.

He added that he was not allowed to use the entertainment system — even with his own headphones — during the July 9 Astana-Almaty flight.

The post gained around 150,000 views, prompting a response from Air Astana.

“When a FlyArystan aircraft is substituted with an Air Astana plane, services are provided according to the budget airline’s standards. Access to the entertainment system requires headphone distribution, which is not done on FlyArystan flights. We apologize for the inconvenience. Such aircraft substitutions are necessary and may occur due to late arrivals or technical issues,” the airline said in a statement.

An unexpected reason that could get you banned by an airline