ALMATY is to remain the gateway to Kazakhstan according to reports filtering back to London.
As noted in ABTN, pressure was being put on foreign airlines to relocate their flights to the new political capital of the former soviet state rather than Almaty, the much larger commercial centre.
This idea has now been dropped much to the relief of BMED, who fly to the city daily on behalf of British Airways, and the other foreign airlines including Air France, KLM, Lufthansa, British Airways, Transaero and Turkish Airlines.
Air Astana, owned 51% by the state and 49% by British Aerospace, links the two main cities four times a day with a Boeing 737 operation taking under two hours.
http://www.flybmed.com