Kazakhstan air carriers promise ticket prices rise

Kazakhstan air companies want to raise the ticket prices, Channel 7 reports. The rise is related to cancellation of the 50-percent discount on air navigation services that has been in effect in Kazakhstan for many years. A representative of Air Astana says that the carrier has already applied to the anti-monopoly authority that approved cancellation of the discounts. The discount on air navigation services for Kazakhstan air companies was effective for 14 years. The discount was introduced to help Kazakhstan's transportation development. “We understand that the transportation market has been formed, the discount has fulfilled its purpose and its current use does not comply with the initial purpose any more. The rates with the use of this discount are lossmaking and this directly contradicts Kazakhstan Natural Monopolies Law,” head of KazAeroNavigation Nurzhan Akhmetov said. He added that there will be no great raise in air tickets prices: “In case of a half full plane the share of air navigation services is 180 tenge ($1.2) per ticket with the decreasing coefficient (the 50% discount) and 360 tenge ($2.4) per ticket without it. That means that the increase will make around 0.6 percent per economy-class tickets that cost 28 thousand tenge ($190). It will be even less for business-class. Evidently, there are no reasons to worry.”