Major Airports in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan is the world’s ninth-largest country and its biggest landlocked one, a vast spread of steppe, desert and mountain where overland distances are so great that flying is often the only practical way to cross the country. Its airport network is built around two big hubs, the commercial capital Almaty in the southeast and the political capital Astana in the north, and run largely by the flag carrier Air Astana, its low-cost arm FlyArystan and the privately owned SCAT Airlines.

Below we map and rank Kazakhstan’s airports by the number of nonstop destinations each one serves, drawn from live route data on AirportRoutes. We rank by regularly-served destinations, routes flown often enough to count as scheduled service, rather than raw nonstop totals. The figures come from observed flight data, a large sample rather than a complete published timetable, so treat them as a guide to relative connectivity rather than official totals. One pattern stands out at once: the international map leans towards Turkey, Russia, the Gulf and China, while Europe and the wider world are reached mostly through a handful of long-haul links from Almaty.

Which Kazakh airports have direct flights to the US?

Kazakhstan has no scheduled nonstop flights to the United States. No Kazakh airport, including Almaty and Astana, has a direct passenger route across to North America, and Air Astana’s longest flights reach Western Europe and East Asia rather than the Americas.

For the United States, the usual routings connect through a single European, Gulf or Asian hub. Common options run via Frankfurt (Lufthansa flies from both Almaty and Astana), Istanbul (Turkish Airlines), Dubai (flydubai and Air Astana), Amsterdam (KLM) or Seoul, where travellers pick up onward flights to US cities. Almaty is the only Kazakh airport with the long-haul connections to feed this traffic at scale.

A closer look at Kazakhstan’s main airports

✈️ Almaty (ALA)

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Almaty International Airport sits on the northern edge of Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city and former capital, with the snow-capped peaks of the Trans-Ili Alatau rising just beyond it in the country’s far southeast. It is comfortably the busiest airport in Kazakhstan and the main hub of Air Astana, the national flag carrier, together with its low-cost arm FlyArystan.

Serving the commercial heart of the country, ALA reaches around 70 regularly-served nonstop destinations, by a wide margin the largest network in Kazakhstan and the only one with genuine intercontinental reach. Alongside a dense web of domestic routes, it links to Istanbul, Moscow, Dubai, Seoul and Beijing, and to European hubs such as Frankfurt, London and Amsterdam.

Main airlines: Air Astana, FlyArystan, SCAT Airlines, China Southern, Turkish Airlines. See the full route map for ALA on AirportRoutes →

🏛️ Astana (NQZ)

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Nursultan Nazarbayev International Airport serves Astana, Kazakhstan’s purpose-built capital on the open northern steppe (the city was renamed back to Astana in 2022 after several years as Nur-Sultan). The airport lies a short way south of the centre and is the country’s second-busiest, a major base for Air Astana, FlyArystan and SCAT Airlines.

Serving the capital and the north, NQZ reaches about 48 regularly-served destinations. Its network mixes heavy domestic traffic with international links to Istanbul, Moscow, Dubai and Frankfurt, along with the steady government and business travel drawn to the seat of the country’s national institutions.

Main airlines: Air Astana, FlyArystan, SCAT Airlines, Turkish Airlines, Red Wings. See the full route map for NQZ on AirportRoutes →

🏙️ Shymkent (CIT)

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Shymkent Airport serves Kazakhstan’s third-largest city, a fast-growing southern centre close to the Uzbek border. The airport sits on the northern outskirts of Shymkent and anchors air travel across the country’s densely populated south.

Serving the south, CIT reaches around 30 regularly-served destinations: a strong domestic network centred on Almaty and Astana, plus international flights to Istanbul, Moscow and the Gulf. It is the main base of SCAT Airlines, Kazakhstan’s largest privately owned carrier.

Main airlines: SCAT Airlines, FlyArystan, Air Astana, Pegasus, Turkish Airlines. See the full route map for CIT on AirportRoutes →

🌊 Aktau (SCO)

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Aktau Airport serves the Caspian Sea port of Aktau in Kazakhstan’s far west, the centre of the Mangystau oil and gas region. The airport lies a short way north of the city, on the arid Mangyshlak Peninsula.

Serving the Caspian west, SCO reaches about 17 regularly-served destinations, with busy domestic links to Atyrau, Almaty and Astana alongside international flights across the Caspian to Baku, plus Istanbul and Russian cities. It also carries heavy oil-industry traffic.

Main airlines: FlyArystan, SCAT Airlines, Air Astana, Azerbaijan Airlines, Pegasus. See the full route map for SCO on AirportRoutes →

🛢️ Atyrau (GUW)

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Atyrau International Airport serves Atyrau, widely seen as the oil capital of Kazakhstan, set on the Ural River where it flows into the Caspian Sea. The city straddles the conventional boundary between Europe and Asia, and the airport sits just south of its centre.

Serving the Caspian oil belt, GUW reaches around 16 regularly-served destinations. Its network is shaped by the energy industry, with domestic links to Aktau, Almaty and Astana and international flights to Istanbul, Baku and Kutaisi, alongside corporate oil-and-gas traffic.

Main airlines: FlyArystan, SCAT Airlines, Air Astana, Pegasus, Neos. See the full route map for GUW on AirportRoutes →

🕌 Turkistan (HSA)

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Hazret Sultan International Airport is one of Kazakhstan’s newest airports, opened in 2021 to serve Turkistan, a historic city in the south built around the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of Central Asia’s most important pilgrimage destinations.

Serving the Turkistan region, HSA reaches about 9 regularly-served destinations, mostly domestic links to Almaty, Astana and the regional cities, with a growing international link to Istanbul that reflects the city’s ambitions as a tourism and pilgrimage centre.

Main airlines: SCAT Airlines, FlyArystan, Turkish Airlines. See the full route map for HSA on AirportRoutes →

⛏️ Karaganda (KGF)

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Sary-Arka Airport serves Karaganda, an industrial and coal-mining city on the open steppe of central Kazakhstan. The airport sits east of the city and has long doubled as a cargo and technical-stop hub, helped by its central location and long runway.

Serving central Kazakhstan, KGF reaches around 8 regularly-served destinations, mostly domestic flights to Almaty and other Kazakh cities, plus a link to Moscow. It is also a well-known refuelling and cargo waypoint on long routes between Europe and East Asia.

Main airlines: SCAT Airlines, FlyArystan, Aeroflot. See the full route map for KGF on AirportRoutes →

🛫 Aktobe (AKX)

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Aktobe Airport serves Aktobe (formerly Aktyubinsk), a regional centre in the northwest of Kazakhstan, on the southern edge of the Ural Mountains. The airport lies just outside the city on the surrounding plain.

Serving the northwest, AKX reaches about 7 regularly-served destinations, almost entirely domestic links to Almaty, Astana, Aktau and the other regional cities, with the occasional international flight to Istanbul. It is a steady, mostly domestic regional airport.

Main airlines: SCAT Airlines, FlyArystan, Air Astana, Pegasus. See the full route map for AKX on AirportRoutes →

Kazakhstan’s smaller and regional airports

Below the main hubs, Kazakhstan has a long tail of regional airports that exist mostly to tie the vast country together by air, since overland journeys can run to thousands of kilometres. Nearly all of them are dominated by domestic flights to Almaty and Astana, flown by SCAT Airlines and FlyArystan.

In the northwest, Uralsk (URA), on the Ural River, runs a compact domestic network feeding Almaty and Astana. Kostanay (KSN), in the northern grain belt, mixes domestic routes with seasonal holiday flights to Antalya, while Ust-Kamenogorsk (UKK, also called Oskemen), in the far-eastern Altai foothills, adds links to Russian cities such as Novosibirsk and Moscow. Two northern cities near the Russian border, Kokshetau (KOV) and Petropavl (PPK), keep small domestic networks.

Further south and east, Semey (PLX, the former Semipalatinsk), Taraz (DMB), Zhezkazgan (DZN) in central Kazakhstan and Taldykorgan (TDK), close to Almaty, round out the network. Each is essentially a single-purpose regional field, connecting its city to Almaty or Astana so residents can reach the rest of the country without a very long drive across the steppe.

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