Air Astana (KC, Astana Nursultan Nazarbayev) is planning to commence flights to North America early next year the Kazakh Civil Aviation Committee (KzCAC) has announced.

Following a meeting last week, the KzCAC agreed to grant the national carrier permission to start direct flights from Astana Nursultan Nazarbayev to New York JFK from January onwards with Hong Kong International and Tokyo to follow. In addition, Air Astana has also been give the go-ahead to serve Singapore Changi from 2019 onwards.

The Central Asian carrier currently operates one A319-100, eight A320-200s, four A321-200s, five B757-200s, three B767-300(ER)s, and nine E190s on flights throughout Kazakhstan as well as to neighbouring CIS states, the Middle East, South East Asia, China, and Western Europe. A maiden A320neo is expected in May while three B787-8s, originally due for delivery from Boeing (BOE, Washington National) in 2017, have been deferred until 2019.