Air Astana CEO, Peter Foster has received special recognition at this year’s Airline Strategy Awards ceremony in London, with the presentation of the Airline Business award. This special award gives recognition to industry leaders seen to have made a lasting strategic contribution to the air transport business and demonstrated strong leadership over an extended period. Unlike all other Airline Strategy Awards, the final decision on the recipient of the Airline Business Award rests entirely with the magazine’s editorial team.
Peter Foster joined Air Astana as President and CEO in May 2005, exactly three years after the carrier was launched as Kazakhstan’s new national carrier with only US$17 million of shareholder funding, its first and last tranche of invested capital. The airline publicly listed earlier this year on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange, Astana International Exchange and London Stock Exchange for a market capitalization at listing of US$847m.
Under Peter Foster’s leadership, Air Astana has delivered outstanding returns for its shareholders, become the largest and most admired airline in Eurasia, established a world class airline brand for its host country Kazakhstan, and is the driving force of aviation development in one of the fastest growing regions for air travel in the world. This has all been achieved whilst maintaining uncompromisingly high standards of operational safety, reliability, and service delivery.
Peter Foster and his management team realized early on the potential not only of point-to-point traffic, but also of the development of hubs from Almaty and Astana to and from Central Asia and the Caucasus onto a longer-haul network to China and East Asia, the Gulf, India, Turkey and Western Europe. Management knew that the “extended home market” concept so successfully developed by some of the world’s leading carriers based in Asia and the Gulf could be applied to Air Astana.
The team also recognized the need to strategically adapt to liberalization of markets and growing democratization of air travel. In 2019, low-cost brand, FlyArystan was established with a separate low-cost specialist management team and has gone on to become the fastest-growing airline in the world over the past five years.
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