Kazakhstan Bek Air’s operator’s certificate and certificates of airworthiness are withdrawn

The airworthiness certificates of nine Fokker 100 aircraft owned by the airline have been revoked (Bek Air)

The Civil Aviation Administration of Kazakhstan (CAAKZ) has recalled the operator’s certificate and certificates of airworthiness from Bek Air, leaving the troubled private airline with only a meagre chance of re-starting operations.

The central Asian country’s aviation authority reveals that Bek Air “failed to fulfil instructions to rectify [a number of safety] violations” identified by CAAKZ following an unscheduled January inspection of the carrier’s operations after its Fokker 100 crash in Almaty in December 2019.

As a result, Bek Air’s operator’s certificate has been recalled and the airworthiness certificates of nine Fokker 100 aircraft owned by the airline have also been revoked.

“In order for Bek Air to regain its operator’s certificate and aircraft airworthiness certificates, it will be required to go through and pass the full certification process again,“ says an Aviation Administration of Kazakhstan statement.

Earlier, in mid-January, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) recalled Bek Air’s Z9 designator code.

Coupled with the current Covid-19-related air transport crisis, the authorities’ actions could be the death knell for the Kazakh airline.  

Bek Air, which calls itself the ‘airline for people’ is one of Kazakhstan’s four largest air carriers. The privately owned airline was founded two decades ago in 1999 and has been based at Uralsk, the administrative centre of western Kazakhstan. Several businessmen and statesmen from the team of Kazakhstan’s first president Nursultan Nazarbayev were among the airline’s ‘founding fathers’.