Flight Review: Air Astana Economy Class (Frankfurt to Astana on A321LR)
Flight #: KC922
From: Frankfurt (FRA)
To: Astana (NQZ)
Flight time: 6h 45min approx.
Aircraft: Airbus A321LR
Class: Economy
It had been a while since the last time I flew Air Astana. The previous experience was rather positive and I was curious to find out whether the Kazakh carrier had kept the standards. It was also a great opportunity to experience one of the world’s longest narrow-body flights, on an A321LR.
I am referring here to a “conventional” A321LR, although Air Astana, together with Airbus, has started adding extra fuel tanks to this type of aircraft in order to be able to reach destinations as far away as London in one go. This modification, brings the range of this aircraft very close to that of the long-awaited A321XLR version, which, at the time of writing these lines is due to enter service very shortly.
By the way, this was a two-way trip, so, while the bulk of this flight review refers to the experience on the first leg of the trip, the approximately 7-hours long service between Frankfurt and Astana, I have also added some snippets about the return one. These cover the points in which the experience differed a little bit between the two flights.
The flight was provided courtesy of Air Astana. Opinions are all my own.
Pre-boarding
Air Astana departs from Frankfurt’s Terminal 2, which is a bit separate from the terminals that Lufthansa uses for most of its flights. Mentioning it here, because, if you have a connecting flight with Lufthansa, which I suspect is a rather common occurrence, since both airlines codeshare, you will need to take the airport’s internal people mover.
However, I must say that, despite Frankfurt not being a particularly comfortable airport for connections, the transfer between terminals was rather smooth.
I did my check-in online on Air Astana’s website (since I don’t fly the airline frequently, I thought it was a bit pointless to download the app) and the experience was rather positive, quite smooth and fast.
Air Astana had put me in for an upgrade, but, sadly, it couldn’t be this time, since the business cabin was fully booked (both legs of the trip were, actually, fully booked, which means Air Astana is doing a pretty good job in selling its premium product!).
Cabin and amenities
Air Astana operates its A321LRs with a two-class cabin, featuring business and economy in a rather low density configuration of 16 business and 150 economy class seats. This is something, which, as we shall soon see, contributes greatly to the passenger experience.
The business class section is a proper differentiated long-haul-type product, with lie-flat, cocooned seats. Interestingly, the business class section alternates double and single rows with a seat configuration that is 2-2, 1-1, 2-2, 1-1, 2-2 (in the 2-2 rows the window seat doesn’t have direct aisle access).
As you can see here, some rows on Air Astana’s business class cabin have a single seat with extra space and both window and aisle access.
I will publish shortly a separate Air Astana Business Class flight review (alas, on the A321ceo, which has a different interior), but, for now, let’s move to the Economy Class cabin.
Air Astana Economy Class
Of the 150 seats in the Economy Class cabin, 18 are “MySeat” seats, and, of these, 12 are marketed as extra legroom seats (which I comment on further down this flight review, as I had the chance to try them out on the return leg of my trip).
Here are Air Astana’s MySeat economy class seats
My first impression of the cabin was excellent: not only it was spotlessly clean and tidy, but the RECARO slim seats are upholstered with a pale colour surface decorated with patterns inspired in Kazakh traditional art (the dimmed lights when taking these pictures makes it difficult to appreciate here). Beautiful!
Air Astana also makes extensive use of the LED cabin lights throughout the flight in order to create a soothing atmosphere (something that I had already observed the previous time I flew this airline).
Here’s how the Air Astana A321LR cabin looks like
Here are Air Astana’s regular economy class seats
The seats in economy class have a rather generous seat pitch (31-32”) and adjustable head-rests, which can be regulated to create a buffer zone around the head and also move up and down to adapt to your height.
Also worth mentioning is the seat recline, which is pretty good (I did manage to sleep for quite some time, which for me is unusual when travelling on economy class)!
Another nice detail, in addition to the customary pillow, bootle of water and earphones, Air Astana provides each passenger, even in economy class, with a proper amenity kit.
The Air Astana amenity kit consists of a little, red branded compact bag, of a shape and size similar to a small foldable umbrella.
It contained a pair of socks, a dental hygiene kit, an eye mask, ear plugs, a pen and a packet of moisturizing cream.
(The bag was a bit different on the return trip, but I will comment on this in a separate section further down the text).
So, quite a nice treat for economy class and, if you have never flown Air Astana before, somehow unexpected!
The crew distributed blankets as well. As you can possibly appreaciate in the picture, these were of rather good quality (way better than the ones you typically get on most European airlines, at least!).
The contents of Air Astana’s economy class amenity kit (apologies for the quality of the picture, the lights were dimmed!). Note that the container shows Beijing, although this was a flight from Frankfurt. Air Astana uses these amenity kits to promote some of its routes.
Inflight Entertainment
Each seat is fitted with a seatback screen and access to Air Astana’s inflight content platform, which is called KCTV (after the airline’s code “KC”). The content selection, while not huge (the movie library is in the several dozen titles rather than several hundred), is quite comprehensive and well balanced between new releases and classic films of different genres, more than enough for the typical length of most of Air Astana’s flights.
It has also other types of content, such as documentaries, series, audio and games and, of course, the flying map.
The only if, is that I was surprised that a whole series of documentaries about Kazakhstan, which looked quite interesting, was only available in the local language.
Overall, the system, which I think is provided by Safran Passenger Innovations (while the content is supplied by Stellar), was pretty smooth and easy to use and the screen had perfect touch responsiveness.
There is not internet connectivity during the flight. What there is, though, is in-seat power, both in the form of a universal power plug in the lower part of the seat as well as a USB ports (underneath the seat and next to the screen).
Air Astana has its own inflight magazine, called Tengri. It is a proper, “old school” paper magazine with pretty good content mostly about Kazakhstan and Air Astana destinations as well as about the airline.
Last but not least, it is worth writing a word about the Air Astana safety video, which is pretty cool. It uses several of Kazakhstan’s natural and historical attractions as a prop for the safety instructions and it really makes you want to explore more of the country!
Food and drink
Air Astana is a full service airline and were were served food (and accompanying drinks) three times during our flight from Frankfurt to Astana: one snack, a main meal and, shortly before arrival, a sandwich (or a stuffed croissant).
The menu is digital and can be accessed easily through the seatback screens. There were three choices of main course. The crew assumes that you will have checked the menu and made up your mind, before they pass with the trolley, so best to check it out in advance to be ready when they come with the trolley!
Here is the bag of crackers we got as snack. It was huuuuge! (several times the size of the regular snack bag on your typical European airline)
We were served the main meal about 1.5 hours into the evening flight out of Frankfurt in the first leg of the trip and you get to see here two of the choices, instead of one.
I had first ordered the pasta, but realizing I had made a mistake (not a fan of tomato sauce!) I asked for a change and the crew were kind enough to bring me the beef with rice
And, shortly before our arrival, a lighter bite. It was close to 5am local time, so this was a sort of breakfast.
There were two choices, either a croissant with ham and cheese (like the one you can see in the photo) or a sandwich.
The crew served drinks each of the three times they distributed something to eat. On two of these occasions only soft drinks, water and coffee and tea were distributed. On one of the runs, wine and other alcoholic drinks were also served.
A few lines about the return trip Astana to Frankfurt, also on an A321LR)
I thought I would include a short section here about the return leg of the trip, from Astana to Frankfurt, because, while the aircraft and most of the elements were identical, there were some parts of the experience that were different. Let’s see what these are.
First, is the seat. The business class cabin was again full, but this time I had the chance to try the MySeat seat with extra legroom. This is good, in principle, although, there is a little caveat.
The first row of MySeat seats is immediately behind the cabin wall dividing business and economy, so, this means that your knees won’t touch the (non-existent) seat in front, but, the flip side of this is that, if you have long legs, the wall will prevent you from stretching your legs fully (something which you can do in a regular seat row by stretching them in the space under the seat in front). The screen on this first row is affixed to the wall, so it is also a bit more distant (ergo, the images appears smaller) than in a regular seat.
On the plus side, it is closer to the front, so embarkation and disembarkation are faster.
There food experience was the same as in the first leg of the trip, but, nevertheless, I add here some additional pictures, so that you can see the (small) variations.
And here the second (light) meal. This time was more of an early dinner than breakfast and, instead of croissant, I got a mozzarella sandwich.
Some differences also in the type of amenity bag. This one, was more like a tote bag and promoted the Almaty-Male (Maldives) route. In addition to its primary role, it is also quite practical to keep some of your small items (bottle of water, books, etc) next to you during the flight.
Unlike the first amentiy kit, this second one contained also an inflatable neck pillow, which is a very practical item for such a long trip (at 7h 45min, the return flight from Astana to Frankfurt was about 1h longer than the flight from Europe) and can be put to use immediately! (plus it can also be used it in further trips!)
Additional considerations
While the touch points involving the airline were all pretty good, two elements of the Astana Airport (NQZ) experience were far from ideal.
The first one was after the flight from Europe: when we arrived at 6am, we were bundled inside of a bus that had clearly insufficient capacity. And, since it was freezing outside, everyone started to push to get inside by whichever means, resulting in a bit of chaos and a rather packed, uncomfortable cabin.
The other was before boarding for the return flight and has to do with extremely slow passport control at Astana airport. We spend over an hour queueing despite the relatively small number of people on the line. I am not an expert in security procedures, but I have never seen such a slow moving passport control, taking many minutes to check every single passport (in my case, and I don’t know why, it took even longer than average, with the guy even taking it to a small office for further checks before waving me through).
To be clear, these two points are outside of the remit of the airline, but I mention them here because they are, after all, part of the journey (you may want to allow extra time ahead of your flight if you are departing from Astana!).
The airport experience, I must say, was clearly much better at Almaty (ALA), which, by the way, inaugurated its brand new international terminal in June 2024, with the result, I have been told, of a significant upgrade of passenger flows, processes and the overall experience.
Our Take
As far as my experience is concerned, Air Astana has one of the best economy class products in the market.
The cabin atmosphere, seat pitch and recline, inflight entertainment and amenities compare favourably with pretty much any other economy class I have flown recently, including longer-haul services on wide-body aircraft.
The “soft” elements of the experience, such as food and drink and onboard service were also very good.
As noted above, there are a couple of elements of the experience on the ground that could be improved, but it would be unfair to attribute these to the airline, since it was external organizations that were responsible for them.
All in all, Air Astana has a very well rounded product that evokes what economy class flying used to be like in the pre-low-cost-carrier era.
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