ASTANA, December 10 (RIA Novosti) - Kazakhstan is going to buy 30 airplanes within the next three to four years, Kazakh Prime Minister Danial Akhmetov said Saturday during a meeting with Boeing Senior Vice President Thomas Pickering.
"The prime minister stressed that Kazakhstan intended to modernize its air fleet with priority given to improving medium-haul regional services," the Kazakh government press service said Saturday.
Kazakhstan's commercial transit market is expected to grow from 2.2 million passengers in 2005 to 11.7 mln in 2015. Up to 60-70 first- to third-class airplanes will be needed to meet this demand by 2015.
Today, the country's airlines use a total of 689 airplanes, including 119 passenger airliners, mainly outdated Russian-made An-24 and Yak-40 models, in operation for over 20 years. By 2010, Kazakhstan is expected to have not more than 12 Soviet- or Russian-made aircraft in operational service.
