Originally Posted by
littlevoices
Thought I'd add my thoughts onto this thread since I recently took a multi-city trip with Air Astana when I realised that a flight to Uzbekistan was ~20% cheaper than a direct flight to Kazakhstan from Hong Kong, and that it was a fairly interesting country to visit too on a personal trip. As such I flew HKG-ALA-TSE//TSE-TAS//TAS-ALA//ALA-HKG in business over a week long period. This gave me three 767s (the HKG legs, plus ALA-TSE, which was a one hour transit onto the same flight) and the E90 for the Tashkent trips.
Good things I liked - in general, things in the air
- Food quality - good choices for an airline, even on the shorter legs there was a meal service and proper menu card given on all the legs. Though it wasn't immediately obvious you can clearly do dine-on-demand and eat when you wish, the crew just wasn't clear on this on my HKG-ALA leg, but was on the return ALA-HKG. The food was, from what I could see, four choices on long haul (chicken, beef, fish, vegetarian), and then two on the short hauls (chicken or veg).
- They handed out sweets on takeoff and landing, was just different and made a difference from towels (which came anyway)
- Crew quality, service, patrolling the cabin - certainly very attentive, even in the middle of the ~6 hour flights from HKG the crew were still around regularly. I liked that the crew just seemed friendly, doing introductions and taking orders prior to takeoff. No problems speaking English or Russian.
- 767 seat, like Swiss airlines in the 1-2-1 set-up, with massage feature and a fully lie flat bed. I slept well enough on the ALA-HKG leg, which is unfortunately a night flight leaving at midnight and arriving at 8am. The E90 seats were nothing special and you may as well be in economy on these legs and save your money in my own view.
- Similarly, the table worked well for working /eating, though it had a strange mechanism to get it in/out (basically lifting up) that I needed to have shown to me
- My journey started really well in HKG as Air Astana paid for the 'Priority plaza first' lounge, which I didn't even know existed, way better than the standard priority plaza lounge, and on a par with the Cathay First class lounge I felt (probably worse champagne, but better cooked to order food). It was my first time in the lounge (I've been in the CX one probably over a hundred times now), but what I liked is that they'd paid for a high quality lounge to start the flight off well. This was however the only good lounge experience, see below..
- Pillow quality - strange how you notice that the pillow was large, clean and comfy, not an after-thought
- Classic movie selection - whilst the movie selection on the 767s was short of brand new hits there was a good selection of around 50 classics that I found a few things to watch/re-watch and enjoyed, it seemed to be a fairly well curated list. However there were no movies at all on the E90, not even an ipad
- Champagne was Tattinger on the long-haul HKG legs, and seemed to have some good quality Georgian wine too. The short-hauls included prosecco, but overall felt the drinks choice was solid.
However, there were some things I didn't quite like, in general on the ground:- My one hour transit at ALA was very unclear. We arrived and got through customs fairly quickly, but it was not clear that your bags didn't need to be picked up, nor that the "transit" route was essentially to leave the baggage area, go upstairs to the domestic area and then clear security again with everyone else. We had to ask (in Russian) to work this out. It could have been in the in-flight magazine for example..
- Lounges, excluding HKG, were very poor for a premium airline:
- ALA domestic, was basically a mixed check-in area/lounge. Quite bizarre, didn't spend any time there due to the short transit. This meant you were in the general small domestic area after security, very crowded
- ALA international, was shared with all other airlines but made you pay for anything other than water and some fairly poor quality nuts/biscuits. Was the first time I've never had free soft drinks. I was expecting something premium
- TAS international, they didn't pay for a lounge (there was one). Unfortunately we arrived just as a few big international flights were about to depart so the airport was completely full and we struggled to find any space for the first ten minutes. Not great
- TSE international, was perfectly reasonable, the Air Astana branded lounge was nice, spacious, well lit and with a choice of food and drinks that I found appropriate to the rest of the brand
- Boarding was, outside of HKG, a strange mess (the E90s received bus gates anyway). They call all boarding together, basically if you are in business class you should push past everyone as in the gate (where they actually do the final ticket check) they do have two queues, but it is entirely unobvious until after you've queued for perhaps ten minutes to get nearer that check. There was no priority boarding in TAS
- The entertainment system could do with a bit of thinking about. I had two peeves, first - you are forced to watch 3 minutes of adverts before any entertainment, that cannot be skipped or fast forwarded, even worse they're all in Kazakh with no sub-titles. Then the exact opposite, the safety videos were repeated three times in English, Russian and Kazakh(fairly dull, some acrobats doing shapes) with some subtitles in Chinese too
And one final mention - unusually it seems like Air Astana serves from the back of the plane, so if you like to get your food first sit at the back.
So would I fly them again: Yes, quite happily if I needed to be in the region, they were a huge step up from the
Mongolian Airlines flights that I took a year before. I agree with
B7474U3 that the service makes the difference, though the 767 hard product was also excellent (originally I was supposed to be on a 757 but luckily they upgraded it at some time between booking and my flight).
Thanks for sharing your experience and it’s reminded me of a few other things to say:
1. Air Astana seem to change equipment A LOT! I’ve only flown 10 sectors with them but I can recall 3 sectors changing equipment between booking and flying. My ALA-TAS sector changed from an E190 to an A321 to an A320 and then after online check-in but before boarding from an A320 to a B767. The longer sectors seem to be more stable given only the 767s and 757s can fly them.
2. You’re right about the boarding. I found LHR and TSE organised but TAS, ALA and FRU was a bit messy. That said the warm welcome when you get on the plane makes up for it.
3. The transit from international to domestic legs could be better explained as you have said. Once you’ve done it once though, it’s actually very easy for the next time.
I’m pleased they’re now getting the A321LR as that eliminates the weakest point in their product offering - the 757 Business Class seats. I think having fully flat seats on all long haul flights, combined with their excellent food and crew will make Air Astana a very attractive airline.