Air Kyrgyzstan ceased its operations on 26th Oct 2017 after its only aircraft , a Boeing 737-500 registered as EX-37501 , suffered a bird strike. The Aircraft went into storage after that incident.
Director of the Civil Aviation Agency, Alexander Nastaev, told at a meeting of Ishenim parliamentary faction ,
The state-owned airline Air Kyrgyzstan has not actually existed since 2018. According to him, Air Kyrgyzstan has not been operating flights since 2017, and since 2018 it has neither aircraft nor regular flights.
Alexander Nastaev also added,
"There is also no staff. All employees have been fired, there are only the director and accountant. It legally exists as an open joint stock company, but in fact it does not work."
"Their Boeing plane is at the airport, but it does not undergo maintenance. It just stands there like scrap metal. As far as I know, the state-owned company has a debt of $3.5 million"
In April 2018 , Kyrgyzstan's government had decided to privatise the Air Kyrgyzstan with a hope to sell a 51% stake in the flag carrier to a private investor.
Earlier in June 2016, the Kyrgyz government had announced plans to float a tender for the sale of a 49% stake in the carrier in September of that year. The stake was determined to be KGS188.9mn (€2.42mn) at the time, with the government stating that the buyer would be obliged to renew and expand Air Kyrgyzstan's fleet, with the acquisition of at least five aircraft within five years.
At a later stage the offer was slightly modified ! According to the new version of the offer, if a foreign investor purchased the major stake, the shares gained must not exceed 49% of ownership in the airline - the other 2% was planned to be sold to Kyrgyz private investors. However, without much assets left in the Airline , Investors are hard to come , till date .
In the year 2018 , Chinese companies had shown interest in the company and were ready to induct around 12 aircraft within 3-5 years, but nothing has happened till date. If you analyse the recent history of the company, in its most successful year 2012 , Air Kyrgyzstan earned 35 million soms as profit.
Corruption has affected the growth , in 2021 , the State Committee for National Security had revealed the facts of corruption in Air Kyrgyzstan OJSC . Employees of the Accounts Chamber, colluding with the management of the airline, concealed the presence of damage caused to the state in the amount of $3,160,903 during scheduled audits.
