Ashgabat (Trend) – The State National Service Türkmenhowaýollary (“Turkmenistan Airlines”) considers the possibility of opening new international flights from Ashgabat to Astrakhan, Jeddah, Milan, Novosibirsk, and Samara, the local press said.

A Turkmenistan Airlines Boeing 757-200 at Birmingham International Airport.

At present, regular flights are being made to 15 cities in 11 countries, including Abu Dhabi, Amritsar, Almaty, Bangkok, Birmingham, Delhi, Dubai, Kiev, London, Moscow, Minsk, Beijing, Istanbul, St. Petersburg, and Frankfurt.

Information states that President Berdimuhamedov has recently signed a decree to equip the air traffic control centre at the Ashgabat International Airport with modern technologies:

• First to be improved will be the quality of local and foreign aircrafts landing at the Ashgabat airport and flying through the airspace of Turkmenistan.
• Second, the number of flights and aircrafts flying through the national airspace will be increased by reducing the vertical distance between aircrafts.
• Third, safety will be improved by increasing the visibility of radar and navigation devices.

The Turkmenbashi international airport commissioned in spring 2010 is a major transit point for air routes from Europe to South- and South-East Asia.

Turkmenistan Airlines was founded in 1992. Since 2001, the airline has been phasing out its aging Soviet-era fleet to make way for a modern fleet of Boeing 717’s, which are extensively used for service on domestic routes. Turkmenistan was the first of the former Soviet republics to purchase aircraft from Boeing.