Air Astana signaled plans to launch the Tokyo/Narita–Almaty route in March 2026.
A sales representative revealed this at a B2B business meeting held at Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai. After obtaining approvals in Japan, the airline aims to make a formal announcement as early as October. It appointed Air System as its Japan general sales agent in 2019.
The service will operate twice weekly using Airbus A321LR aircraft configured with 16 business and 150 economy seats (166 total). The airline expects roughly half of travelers to originate from Japan and Kazakhstan respectively, with particularly strong business demand. According to JETRO, Japan is Kazakhstan’s 10th-largest investor, and the country is rich in natural resources. Currently, routings via Uzbekistan, among others, are common; the shorter travel time of nonstop flights is expected to stimulate tourism demand.
In August 2024, they agreed to implement a codeshare with Japan Airlines (JAL). While it will initially cover Air Astana’s Tokyo/Narita–Almaty service and certain domestic routes in Japan and Kazakhstan, the parties aim to broaden the scope in the future to routes not served by Air Astana, such as those to the United States.
Air Astana is a Kazakhstani airline founded in 2001. It is the largest airline group in Central Asia and the Caucasus, with a network extending to Europe, the Middle East, and beyond.
Its largest East Asian destination is Seoul/Incheon, served with one roundtrip daily from Almaty using Boeing 767 aircraft and twice weekly from Astana using Airbus A321LR aircraft. Elsewhere in Asia, it also serves Guangzhou, Beijing, and Urumqi.
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