Date: 13 Mar 2000
Time: 05:55:46
Remote Name: 24.30.137.96
03/13/2000 BBC Worldwide Monitoring Source: Khabar TV, Almaty, in Russian 1500 gmt 11 Mar 00/BBC Worldwide Monitoring/(c) BBC Excerpts from report by Kazakh Khabar TV on 11th March [Presenter] It was not a very successful day for over 200 passengers of the Almaty - Sharjah [United Arab Emirates] - Almaty charter flight which was to be carried out by the Yanzar [previously registered as Zhana Arka] private air company on the order of the Zhana Arka tourist firm. Today they failed to reach their planned destination. The Ministry of Transport and Communications Civil Aviation Department prohibited Yanzar from carrying out this flight. Grigoriy Bedenko has the details. [Correspondent over video of passengers sitting on a bench near a building] This picture, which one could see today at a hall in the international airport in Almaty , has already become a classic of Kazakh civil aviation. Over 80 [as said] passengers from various towns of our republic, who paid 370 dollars for an air ticket to the United Arab Emirates, had to spent distressing hours waiting for a flight announcement... [Presenter] Taking into account the incident involving the Yanzar private air company, the Ministry of Transport and Communications made it clear that the regime of indulgence towards private air companies has ended. The suggestion that the situation in the air transportation market had been very beneficial for those who previously headed the Committee for Civil Aviation was made today at the Ministry of Transport and Communications. Galina Topoleva has the details. [Correspondent] The new chairman of the Committee for Civil Aviation, Anvar Batalov, took up his post at the Ministry of Transport and Communications only three months ago. As regards his deputies, they have been working here even less than three months. But this period of time turned out to be enough for them to get their bearings and take measures to put relations with private air companies in order. Commenting on the incident involving Yanzar, which is Zhana Arka at the same time, the committee officials referred to several documents: to the convention on international civil aviation and the regulations for carrying out non-regular air transportation on domestic and international air lines. The Air Kazakhstan national carrier is the so-called state-appointed carrier for the Almaty - Sharjah - Almaty route. Regulations prohibit charter flights on a route for which a carrier has been determined. All these documents, according to the two deputy chairmen of the Committee for Civil Aviation were ignored by the previous committee workers.
[Kalkaman Bekmukhanov, deputy chairman of the Ministry of Transport and Communications' Committee for Civil Aviation] We started putting all these documents in order and regulating private air companies' activities. And then we immediately let Yanzar know about this and gave two months' notice and said that they could carry out the flight until the end of February and that they would not be allowed to do so afterwards. [Correspondent] There is also another reason for restricting the number of flights carried out by private air companies. The other day, the Iranian Ministry of Roads and Transport presented a bill on the use of air space, in which 22 private air companies are indicated. [Mukhit Kubayev, deputy chairman of the Ministry of Transport and Communications' Committee for Civil Aviation, captioned, shown holding a sheet of paper with figures] Previously, no one regulated these activities. Anyone could carry out flights to anywhere they wanted to. Now we have huge debts for the use of Iranian air space alone. [Correspondent] According to the Iranian bill, 2m dollars in debts should be paid off. The Iranian authorities do not take into account whether these are state or private air companies which do not pay for the use of air space. They set the condition that they would impose a ban on any Kazakh flight over the territory of Iran if the bill is not settled in one month. Yanzar was registered in that list under its previous name, Zhana Arka, and there is a figure of 42,000 dollars opposite its name... It was announced that no more licences of private air companies would be extended unless the Committee for Civil Aviation gets a certificate confirming that they have paid their bills. Because in addition to Iran, there are also claims by Russia , China, Afghanistan, Tajikistan , Kyrgyzstan and other countries which may also present their bills to the [ Kazakh ] government soon. The present workers of the committee cannot clearly explain the reasons for the lack of order there...