Air Astana has reduced the number of international
flights to Turkey, the UAE, Ukraine and Germany.
The weekly frequency of flights to Istanbul has
decreased from 16 to 12 flights, to Dubai - from 12 to 8 flights,
to Kiev - from 3 to 1 flight, to Frankfurt - from 6 to 4 flights.
At the same time, the company intends to
supplement these with charter flights to Sharm El Sheikh on the
Egyptian Red Sea coast, as well as to Maldives.
The domestic flight
schedule remains unchanged.
“We appreciate and understand the government’s
reasons for and efforts to suppress the spread of the virus,” said
Peter Foster, CEO & President. “At the same time, travel,
tourism and leisure industries are collectively a massive
generator of global economic activity and jobs. It is vital that
these industries are able to restart in a meaningful way at a
point early in 2021, failing which the financial and social
consequences will be extreme to both national economies and
people’s lives. We firmly believe, in line with IATA and the
Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA), of which we are full
members, that pre-departure COVID19 testing for passengers
intending to take international flights holds the key to a
restart.”
The United States Transportation Command (US
Transcom) has also confirmed the low risk of COVID19 transmission
onboard an aircraft. The US Transcom testing, which was conducted
in August, found that “the overall exposure risk from aerosolized
pathogens, like coronavirus, is very low” on the types of airline
aircraft typically contracted to move Department of Defense (DOD)
personnel and their families.
More than 300 aerosol releases, simulating a
passenger infected with COVID19, were performed over eight days
using United Airlines Boeing 767-300 and 777-200 twin-aisle
aircraft. You can read more about the test and the results
here.
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