Air Astana: A320 maintenance according to EASA standards in Kazakhstan

The airline Air Astana maintains its own maintenance center at the Kazakh capital's Astana airport, which currently specializes in the Airbus A320 series of aircraft. According to the airline, it is currently the most modern MRO center in the Asian state.

The work is carried out according to EASA standards and the company has all the approvals required to work in accordance with the EU authority's guidelines. There is a specific reason for this, because the company's own fleet and that of its subsidiary Fly Arystan are registered in the Irish register, so it is mandatory to work according to EASA standards. Otherwise there would be a risk that the Irish IAA would deregister the aircraft. But that has never been an issue for Air Astana, because before the company opened its own MRO centers, it had this type of aircraft serviced by reputable providers outside Kazakhstan. Incidentally, this is still the case for the long-haul fleet (Boeing 767).

In terms of bureaucracy, maintaining a maintenance center in Kazakhstan according to EASA standards means double the work, because all reports must be written and submitted in English for the European authorities and in the official language of Russian for the Kazakh Civil Aviation Authority. Air Astana is happy to accept this, because in the long term it also wants to offer maintenance services for third-party customers at its Almaty and Astana locations. It is already available for urgent work, for example if an aircraft for which it is authorized to maintain has an AOG and the help of Air Astana technology is requested. Scheduled work is not currently being carried out due to capacity reasons, but this is explicitly planned as part of the planned expansion.

Capacities are to be expanded

The expansion of MRO capacities is to be carried out in line with the growth of the fleet. The next step will be the expansion of the existing hangar in Astana. The project is to be implemented in the next few years and then it should be possible to maintain aircraft up to approximately the size of the Boeing 787-10. It is assumed that the necessary maintenance authorizations for the ordered Dreamliners will also be obtained by then. At present, both base and line checks and work are carried out in Astana exclusively for aircraft in the A320 series.

When asked whether the continental winter climate, which is notoriously extremely cold in Kazakhstan, makes work on the commercial aircraft more difficult, a technical manager at Air Astana said that it is of course a challenge, but that everything is manageable and the climatic conditions can be handled very well.

Why is the fleet registered in Ireland?

If you look closely at the registration of aircraft used by Air Astana, even a layperson will quickly see that they are not registered in the airline's home country. The aircraft are all registered in the Irish register. The same applies to the young subsidiary Fly Arystan. But why?

Italian airlines often have leased aircraft registered outside Italy. Popular registration locations are Ireland and Denmark. In recent times, the Maltese register has also become increasingly popular. The reason behind this is that Italian insolvency law is extremely complicated and with I registration, the lessors would have to go through a laborious process to be able to get their property back. This does not apply in this form to Kazakhstan, but it is also a bureaucratic matter.

Put simply, there are two reasons for this: on the one hand, Kazakh airlines save themselves high import taxes by registering abroad, and on the other hand, this also helps to maintain the value of the aircraft. Many lessors or potential buyers of commercial aircraft do not accept supervision by the Kazakh civil aviation authority. There are considerable reservations that the authority does not have sufficient expertise when it comes to western aircraft. The same applies to Russia, which is why, before the invasion of Ukraine, most western aircraft operated by Russian operators were registered in the Bermuda Islands or Ireland, for example. These were then transferred to the RA register without the consent of the aircraft owners and are therefore considered unsupervised, which leads to a significant reduction in value.

In summary, it can be said that registering western commercial aircraft outside Kazakhstan is a common practice among local airlines, on the one hand to save taxes and on the other to comply with lessors' requirements or to optimize the value retention of owned aircraft. The Irish Civil Aviation Authority then supervises the aircraft and not that of Kazakhstan. This also has an advantage for passengers, because the aircraft is subject to the high EASA standards, which must be monitored by the Irish authority. In a certain sense, this is also a matter of prestige for Fly Arystan and Air Astana.