Air Astana review by Peter 2013-06-17

Flight numbers and destination KC345 TSE-UKK KC346 UKK-TSE I take this flight roughly every three months, Astana to Ust-Kamenogorsk and return. Generally the aircraft type is an Embraer 190, although I have flown on A320s occasionally due to an inability to fly because of extreme weather conditions at Ust-Kamenogorsk in December - January (-45C temperatures) and limited horizontal ground level visibility. This causes a back-up of passengers at Astana and a larger aircraft is used to clear the backlog. Very high level of skill landing in this extreme weather at Ust-Kamenogorsk, very impressive and smooth. Technically, I cannot fault all flights I have taken with Air Astana, but there are some strange laws regarding online check-in. People over the age of 60 are not allowed to check in online, because of the and I quote, "the high incidence of fraud amongst over 60 year olds ..." The only other complaint I have is that you should not count on receiving the seat that you selected at booking. This is not even indicative of where you will be seated even if you are a frequent flyer member. The only sure fire way I have found to receive a reasonable seat allocated is to have either a native Kazakh or Russian speaking national to accompany you at the check-in counter and they will argue the toss with the check-in bureaucrat. So for the above two reasons (lack of on-line check-in and bizarre seat allocation system) I will rate the trip satisfaction overall as 5-Fair.