ALA Almaty

How deep the ALA board really is

The table above says where a courier can fly from ALA. This reads the same 86 destinations back for the questions a dispatcher asks second: how much of the board rests on one airline, how much of it runs less than daily, whether the return leg is as thick as the outbound, what the clock here does to a Gulf working day and which of the destinations shut at night, all of it computed on 2026-09-07 from AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics.

• 52of the 86 destinations are flown by one airline
• 41destinations run less than once a day
• 10destinations have four or more departures a day
• 47.7%of the destinations name Air Astana, the largest presence here

Who holds the departures at ALA

47 airlines appear on the ALA board and they do not hold it evenly. Air Astana is on 41 of the 86 destinations, 47.7 per cent of them, and on 10 of those it is the only airline flying the sector. The destinations it appears on carry 122.1 of the 162 departures a day this airport files, though other airlines fly some of the same sectors, so read that as reach rather than as a share of the aircraft.

The next largest presence is SCAT Airlines on 20 destinations. 33 of the 47 airlines at ALA appear on a single destination each, which is the long tail every airport carries, and none of it is a rebooking option when the sector you need is the one that fell over.

An airport held this tightly is quick to book and slow to recover: with 41 of the 86 destinations on one airline, the second aircraft on an ALA sector is usually another Air Astana aircraft, and when there is not one the desk is looking at another airport rather than another airline. No alternate airport within road reach is held for ALA, so that second look is a longer road leg or a different day.

How much of the ALA board is daily

Of the 86 destinations, 45 are flown at least once a day and 41 are not, 8 of them running once a week or less. The median destination on the ALA board is flown about once a day.

An average of 0.14 flights a day is the schedule statistic, and it is worth translating it before anything is promised to anybody: ALA to Tehran (IKA) is about one a week, so a missed departure there is not a delay of hours, it is the next slot.

The five busiest destinations carry 57.6 of the 162 departures a day, 35.5 per cent of the whole board. The other 81 destinations are spread widely enough that a courier who misses the first departure at ALA usually has somewhere else to look on the same board.

Destination	Country	The only airline on it	Flights a week	km	Routing
Batumi BUS	Georgia	Air Astana	1	2,891	plan this
Dalaman DLM	Turkiye	Air Astana	1	4,115	plan this
Jeddah JED	Saudi Arabia	SCAT Airlines	1	4,237	the pair page
Malé MLE	Maldives	Air Astana	1	4,368	the pair page
Milan MXP	Italy	Neos	1	5,255	plan this
Rayong UTP	Thailand	Shell Aircraft	1	4,111	plan this
Singapore SIN	Singapore	AirAsia X	1	5,380	the pair page
Tehran IKA	Iran	Qeshm Air	1	2,381	plan this
Arqalyk AYK	Kazakhstan	SCAT Airlines	2	1,089	plan this
Balkhash BXH	Kazakhstan	SCAT Airlines	2	425	plan this

The ten destinations out of ALA where one airline holds the sector and files fewer than seven departures a week, with the weekly figure taken as the average daily rate multiplied by seven rather than as a fixed timetable. 25 further destinations sit in the same position and are listed in the board above.

The way back from ALA

The desk holds the return direction for 47 of the 86 destinations, and a courier plans the way back on those figures rather than on the outbound. On twelve of them the return into ALA runs thinner than the outbound by more than a quarter. The widest gaps are Sanya (SYX) at 0.71 out a day against 0.14 back, Sharm el Sheikh (SSH) at 1.4 out a day against 0.57 back and Baku (GYD) at 3.7 out a day against 1.7 back.

It runs the other way as well: Jeddah (JED) files 0.57 a day back into ALA against 0.14 outbound, which is the shape that strands a courier at this end rather than at the far end.

The clock at ALA

ALA keeps Asia/Almaty time, an hour ahead of Dubai all year.

When it is 09:00 on a Dubai working morning it is 10:00 at ALA, so a nine to six day at each end overlaps for eight hours. That is wide enough to settle a customs question at ALA and still make a departure the same day.

The night at ALA

2 of the destinations from here carry a documented night restriction of their own, which is a departure time question at this end rather than an arrival problem at the other.

Into Frankfurt-am-Main (FRA) the door shuts at 23:00 local, so the last departure from ALA that lands inside it leaves around 19:22, on a modelled block of 6h 38m. Into London (LHR) the door shuts at 23:30 local, so the last departure from ALA that lands inside it leaves around 20:14, on a modelled block of 7h 16m. Those two departure times out of ALA are worked backwards from the published window with the block time model this site uses everywhere, 720 to 880 km an hour by sector length with thirty minutes on the ground, so they are arithmetic rather than a timetable and the desk checks the published departure before it promises the landing.

Where ALA turns up on the rest of this site

ALA carries two other pages on this site as well: the Kazakhstan country desk, which sets out the customs practice, the working week and the road legs behind this airport and the ALA transit page for the connecting case, where a courier changes aircraft here rather than starting or finishing.

The site publishes 41 airport pair pages that start or end at ALA, each with the distance, the block time, the carriers on the sector and a door to door clock. The busiest are Almaty to Astana (NQZ), Almaty to Tashkent (TAS) and Almaty to Istanbul (IST).

Four of the 346 published hand carry lanes run through this airport: Almaty to Frankfurt, Almaty to Sharjah and Dubai to Almaty. A lane page is the commercial version of the board above, with the customs, the ground legs and the price at ALA written out.

One courier posting names ALA as the airport a courier here flies from: Almaty.

To price a movement rather than read the board, the route calculator opens with ALA already set as the origin, and it works out the flying time, the distance and the delivery hour for any of the 86 destinations above.