“2020 will be a breakthrough year” for the aviation industry of Uzbekistan due to the high pace of reforms, a joint statement by Uzbekistan Airways and Uzbekistan Airports said. These companies were formed in 2019 from splitting of the National Airline Uzbekistan Airways. The World Bank experts contributed to the distribution of airline and airport functions between the two companies.

“Over the past 30 years, there were virtually no reforms in the Uzbek aviation sector. As a result, serious problems and deep controversies have accumulated. The sector evolved with a monopoly. Hence we have high fares and poor service quality,” the statement adds.

Three years ago were launched reforms aimed at liberalizing the aviation market, expanding the flights, implementing modern management methods and improving the quality of service, the statement adds.

During this period, the number of foreign airlines flying to Uzbekistan increased from 15 in 2017 to 23 in 2019, and in 2020 there should be even more of them. The number of serviced flights at airports in Uzbekistan increased from 21,688 to 25,877 (forecast for 2020 is 30,500), the number of passengers increased from 3.9 million to almost 6.5 million (7.85 million).

Since October 2019, the “open skies policies using the “fifth air freedom” has been launched at Karshi, Nukus, Termez and Bukhara airports. But “the launch of an open skies policies as itself will not result in the immediate increase in the rapid number of flights and the passenger traffic,” the statement said.

To establish flights to these airports, negotiations are underway with a number of airlines, including Turkish Airlines (Turkey), Israir (Israel), Garuda (Indonesia), Aeroflot, IrAero, Siberia, Yakutia (Russia), SCAT ( Kazakhstan) and others. These carriers announced their readiness to launch flights from March to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Almaty, Nur-Sultan, Aktau. Discussions are ongoing on launching flights to Israel and Turkey.

“There are a number of issues that need to be addressed in the near future related to the infrastructure of airports, the runways and passenger terminals, and services at airports. It is expected that the planned improvements will increase the attractiveness of the Uzbek aviation sector for foreign air carriers,” the statement said.

According to the statement, a number of major projects to improve the condition of airports are planned:

• construction of a new passenger terminal and runway at Samarkand international airport, with throughput to be increased from 500 to 1,500 passengers per hour;
• the construction of a new runway at the Termez international airport and reconstruction of the Andijan international airport will provide an opportunity to service all types of aircrafts and will increase the number of flights by 2–3 times.

For the high-quality implementation of these projects based on international experience, World Bank experts were involved. They are directly involved in preparing of the Uzbekistan Aviation Industry Development Strategy, aimed at liberalizing the aviation market and introducing modern management methods.

New Humo Air airline is being created to bring competition and meet the demand for domestic and regional flights.