A central Asian airline headed by a former senior executive from Cathay Pacific Airways is set to start direct flights by the middle of the year between Kazakhstan and Hong Kong.
Air Astana will become the first carrier to inaugurate a twice-weekly service between the heart of central Asia and the city when flights are launched by June.
The carrier's president is Peter Foster, who left Cathay Pacific in 1999 when he was the airline's manager for Taiwan and the Philippines.
Foster resigned to become part of a group of five former Swire Pacific and Cathay executives who joined in a management rescue and corporate rehabilitation of Philippine Airlines. This came a year after the collapse of merger talks between Cathay and PAL, which was badly mauled in the Asian financial crisis in 1998.
Foster left PAL and became chief executive of Royal Brunei Airlines in 2002 before being recruited as Air Astana president in 2006. He was expected to announce the launch of services between Almaty, the Kazakh capital, and Hong Kong during a visit to the city next month, an airline insider said on Friday.
The source said flights would start in May or June. Air Astana will mark 10 years of operations in May.
Asked to confirm the plans, Tony Phillips, Air Astana's Singapore-based spokesman, said: 'You're on the ball. The date's not finalised yet, but that's a decent guess'.