Dear Air Astana flyer,

I hope you and your families have enjoyed the long and very hot summer, and have returned to work feeling refreshed, invigorated, and not too sunburnt. I also hope you had the chance to visit Astana EXPO and its myriad of fascinating attractions and shows (and if you are reading this before 12th September, there’s still time to visit). My family and I will miss EXPO. Whatever age or interest it had something for everyone, and whilst we fully support the site’s conversion to the Astana International Financial

Centre, we wonder if there isn’t scope to permanently retain at least some of the exhibitions and attractions in a reconstituted ‘Astana World Park’, perhaps similar to Dubai’s successful Global Village.

This month we cover feature Kerala, a province in southwest India which has become well-known for its beaches, its network of ‘backwater’ rivers on which one can cruise its forests in style and comfort, its great cuisine and generally laid-back lifestyle. We recently increased the frequency of flights to India by adding thrice weekly services to Delhi from Astana, in addition to the daily flights from Almaty. The flights have convenient connections to and from Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities in Russia, and we invite our Kazakhstan, Russian and Indian customers to take full advantage of the improved schedule. From Delhi there are convenient connections by airlines such as Air India and IndiGo throughout the country, including to Kerala’s principal cities of Trivandrum and Kochi.

Last month we were pleased to sponsor the first Kazakhstan ‘Schools Challenge’, culminating in a group of 36 young adults from high school winning flights to London for a short summer course at Cranfield University, home to the world’s leading aviation-specialised faculty. We confess to a degree of self-interest as we hope in time to recruit a number of them as colleagues. Air Astana has ambitious growth plans, which can only be realised with a larger establishment of pilots, engineers, service delivery and administrative staff. We have always been a popular employer and we hope our ‘Try On A Dream’ recruitment campaign will persuade our younger customers to consider a career in the exciting and challenging world of aviation.

I wish you a pleasant flight with Air Astana today.

Yours truly,