Air Kazakhstan (1996) (Almaty International) has acquired ten Dash 8-400s from Bombardier Aerospace (BBA, Montréal Trudeau) airline president, Nurjan Shakirov, said on Monday following a Q400 promotional show.
"We bought ten Q400 NextGen aircraft from Bombardier Company. Each aircraft costs USD23million. In March and April 2015 five or six aircraft will be delivered to Kazakhstan. From then on, they will start to operate domestic flights," he told Tengrinews.
Shakirov went on to add that Bombardier will provide consultancy services leading to the establishment of an aviation and technical training centre.
“We will hire foreign pilots to begin with due to a shortage of local pilots. But we will be gradually introducing our local pilots into the company. In the first year, part of the cabin crew will also be local,” he said.
The carrier will focus exclusively on serving country's domestic service needs with three hubs to be established in Almaty International, Astana Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Atyrau.
