Air Astana reports revenue growth despite engine problems

Air Astana reported revenue growth of 11.4% to $1,453.9 million  despite operational challenges from Pratt & Whitney engine issues. The airline group’s EBITDAR increased 0.8% to $321.2 million for the full year, though the EBITDAR margin declined 2.3 percentage points to 22.1%. Profit after tax decreased $35.9 million to $13.6 million, down from $49.4 million in 2024. The company said it experienced 22 unscheduled engine removals during 2025 due to Pratt & Whitney engine design defects, which grounded up to 13 aircraft during peak season. Air Astana estimates the cumulative lost production from these removals had a negative impact of $42.3 million on EBITDAR for the year. Available seat kilometres increased 14.0% to 22.0 billion, while revenue passenger kilometres rose 13.0% to 18.2 billion. The group carried 9.7 million passengers in 2025, up 7.9% from 9.0 million in 2024, maintaining a load factor of 82.7%. In the fourth quarter, total revenue increased 15.8% to $357.1 million. Revenue per available seat kilometre turned positive, rising 9.8% to 7.18 cents, reflecting capacity allocation to higher-margin international routes and fare adjustments. Cost per available seat kilometre increased 17.3% to 7.23 cents due to underutilisation of operational staff and fixed maintenance costs spread over reduced capacity. The airline expanded its fleet to 62 aircraft and launched 25 new routes during 2025. In February 2026, Air Astana signed agreements with Boeing for five firm 787-9 aircraft and with Airbus for 25 A320neo family aircraft, with deliveries scheduled between 2031 and 2035. CEO Peter Foster said: “The Group has made significant progress in a number of areas, as we position both of our brands for long-term success. This includes investment in our fleet (including the largest aircraft order in our history), expansion of our route network (25 new routes), improvements in customer experience and enhanced operational efficiency – a central aspect being advancing our digital capabilities. Our Aviation Technical Centre serves as a primary asset in the resilience of the business, with the in-house MRO expertise being margin protective in the context of our ongoing management of the Pratt & Whitney issue. “Pratt & Whitney prompted Unscheduled Engine Removals are an industry-wide issue. UERs have impacted profitability by limiting our growth opportunities and thereby increasing unit costs, driven primarily by lost capacity, compressing the margin between RASK and CASK across the year. Our mitigation actions, however, have placed us in a strong position to minimise the forward-looking impact. We see the impact from UERs as diminishing over time. We have addressed the RASK challenge with improvements towards the end of Q3 and a particularly visible recovery in Q4 with an increase of 9.8%. That gives us further confidence in our business with focus on CASK. As we start growing and spreading costs over a bigger capacity, we will achieve the margins we aspire to,” Foster said. “With this being my final set of results, I would like to end by expressing the huge confidence I have in Air Astana and its leadership. We have a strong, diverse and motivated management team, many of whom I have worked with for my entire tenure. Others have joined very recently and will bring an external perspective to our strategy, such as Gonçalo Pires as our new CFO and Johan Eidhagen as the new FlyArystan President. From April, they will be led by Ibrahim Canliel who is uniquely positioned to drive Air Astana’s next phase of development. Ibrahim was a commercial leader within the group for 15 years before becoming CFO. In his roles he has been integral to much of the success we have enjoyed and as CFO also took responsibility for the entire IPO process. It has been my pleasure to work with him for over two decades and I leave the airline in very effective hands.” For Editorial Inquiries Contact: Editor Matt Driskill at [email protected] For Advertising Inquiries Contact: Head of Sales Sally Passey at [email protected]