Central Asian and Russian Aircraft to Be Repaired in Aqtau

There are plans to transform the Aqtau Airport into a multimodal aviation hub with a cargo handling capacity of up to 200 thousand tons annually, Orda reports.

To this end, the government wants to modernize the terminal infrastructure, build a fueling complex, and update the runways.

The airport's main advantage is its geographical accessibility: it is only a three-hour flight to Europe and is integrated with various transport types. YDA, Turkish Technic, and ASFAT plan to build an aircraft maintenance and repair center and a training center for aviation specialists here.

The maintenance center will service civil and military aircraft of Kazakhstan, Russia and Central Asian countries (411 passenger aircraft of civil aviation: Kazakhstan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan). As a result of the implementation of these measures, the cargo transportation capacity of the airport will increase to 200 thousand tons per year, and the annual turnover will be 520 billion tenge,
Minister of Transport Marat Karabayev said at a Majilis government hour.

The Transport Ministry of Transport prioritizes providing aviation fuel.

Today, domestic airports depend on imports, which leads to unstable supplies. The department proposes creating a single operator based on KazMunayGas-Aero LLP to address this.

This will exclude ineffective intermediaries, stabilize supplies and offer affordable prices for aviation fuel for transit flights through Kazakhstan by purchasing large volumes,
 said Karabayev.

Additionally, work is underway to digitalize cargo transportation processes and introduce a special economic zone regime. This will speed up cargo handling procedures and make Kazakhstan more attractive for international transit routes.

On the Asia-Europe route, the volume of cargo transportation is 12 million tons, of which 1.7 million tons are transported through the airspace of Kazakhstan. Our goal is to utilize part of this volume on the territory of the country,  added the Minister.

Original Author: Anastasia Prilepskaya