Dear Air Astana flyer,

In his aviation thriller novel No Highway, written exactly 70 years ago, the British author Nevil Shute wrote an Author’s Note as follows: “The scrupulous and painstaking investigation of accidents and incidents is the key to all safety in the air, and demands the services of people of the very highest quality”. Shute, who was a former senior civil and military aeronautical engineer, knew what he was talking about. Commercial flying is of course immeasurably safer today than it was in 1948, but that very fact in itself carries inherent risk. For in these days of almost fully-automated aircraft systems, with their multiple redundancies and backups, it is too easy to lose sight of the fact that whilst risk can and must be minimised, it can never be entirely eliminated. Bad weather, heavy air traffic, aircraft defects, human and other factors will inevitably continue to cause incidents, so it is imperative that the investigative response by investigation agencies be robust and of absolute integrity, reinforced, as is often mandated, by experts from the country of aircraft manufacture and (if applicable) by experts from the country of aircraft registration. ICAO, the ‘super-regulator’ to which all countries that have a meaningful civil aviation industry are required to be a member, and whose regulations are mandatory, lays down very clear instructions as to how investigations should be conducted. We urge all the countries in which we operate to be strictly ICAO compliant, in the interests of continuous improvement of air safety.

As summer is here, many of you will be travelling abroad or within Kazakhstan with your families. We have continued to add more flights to popular holiday destinations and in order to do so, have recently taken delivery of a third Airbus NEO, the larger A321 version. I would like to take the opportunity to wish you all an enjoyable summer vacation.

Yours truly,

Peter Foster

President & CEO

Air Astana