Mad Dogs over the Mountains
TezJet of Kyrgyzstan recently celebrated their 10th year of operations. The airline has built up a reputable name connecting regional cities over the mountainous heartlands to the nation’s capital. Behind the scenes the company’s new president and commercial director have been revolutionising the airlines processes and driving efficiencies to enable international growth. Stewart Marshall travelled to Bishkek to meet with the company’s President and CEO, Mr Arun Kumar Singh.
Fleet Challenges
TezJet operates a legacy fleet of British Aerospace Avro RJ85 and McDonnell Douglas MD-83’s from their base at Manas International Airport, situated 18 miles to the north of capital Bishkek. The airline currently serves a multitude of domestic routes alongside their single international service to Tashkent in neighbouring Uzbekistan. The old-school regional jets have an average age of 28 years and have mostly been retired around the globe to make way for newer alternatives. TezJet is eager to follow suit however several external factors are affecting the procurement of new aircraft for all operators within the country. A key challenge has been that Kyrgyzstan, along with other countries in Central Asia, were placed on the European Union Air Safety List or “blacklist” in 2006. The Kyrgyz Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is still working to get the country removed from the list, which has led to aircraft lessors categorising carriers in the region as high risk and therefore liable to inflated leasing costs. Auditors from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) have recently visited the country and will present their assessment to the European Parliament later this year. The geopolitical situation with respect to Russia and Ukraine has also had an impact due to the country’s close ties to Russia, which has left lessors reluctant to lease aircraft to Kyrgyz companies as they perceive the Russia connection as a huge risk.
Mr. Arun Kumar Singh became the head of the airline in late 2023 and initially aspired to expand the fleet quickly, however emerging global issues further compounded the hurdles they faced:
“When my team and I arrived in the country, we began negotiations with leasing firms to acquire “sunset” aircraft, which is a term used to describe older aircraft which are 15-18 years old. Typically, these have been leased long-term to large carriers who have now decided to hand them back to the Lessor in favour of newer aircraft. Rather than scrap them the lessors are happy to lease out the aircraft for another 5 years at a reasonable cost. My vision when I joined the airline was to acquire some sunset A320 or 737-800’s to expand internationally, however our arrival unfortunately coincided with the emergence of the Pratt & Whitney engine issues which has negatively impacted the entire industry.”
In late 2023, Pratt & Whitney recalled all 3000 PW1000G engines which were in service following the discovery that contaminated metal was used in production of some engine parts. The recall immediately grounded Airbus A220 and A320neo fleets worldwide. With each inspection taking up to 300 days to complete, it’s expected that hundreds of aircraft will remain grounded until at least 2026.
“Overnight the leasing market completely dried up.” Singh exclaimed. “The lessors who we were in discussions with were now flooded with requests. The asset, maintenance and deposit costs doubled as airlines all over the world were now looking to get hold of these aircraft or extending their current leases. This created a queue of airlines needing aircraft and a lot of these were from countries with a very high credit rating, which put them to the front of the queue ahead of Kyrgyz carriers as the countries rating is not great. Every single airline in the world has been affected by these engine issues in one way or another, in our case the leasing costs are not currently financially viable whilst the large-scale grounding of aircraft persists.”
Breaking Habits and Commercial Sucess
Aside from acquiring more aircraft, Singh and his team faced internal challenges as they got to grips with operating a business in Kyrgyzstan. “The biggest challenge we faced from day one is the way in which the business is being conducted - it reminded me of where India was 30 years ago in terms of mindset as it is very old fashioned” Singh recalled. “It’s an ongoing challenge to align our policies and procedures with best practices which are recognised around the world from both the commercial and technical aspects”.
A key policy change for the new management was implementing price impartiality. The country sees most domestic air tickets purchased through travel agencies, where long standing practices were leading to inequality in the market. “We found that if the company liked a particular travel agent, they were being given a better rate for seats so they can make a larger markup, and likewise other agents were being given inflated prices.” Singh stated. “We put a stop to this and have since selected to do business with the top performing agents based on analysis of the previous year’s record. We have changed the policy, so customers are paying the same price, regardless of whether they purchase via an agent or directly from our website. We’re the only airline doing common pricing in the country as we fundamentally believe it’s only fair for the customer. To align with this pricing strategy, we also put an end to soft and hard blocks of seats on our flights. We found that the business was unofficially securing seats for specific agents which we feel is unfair to other businesses. We still have a constant battle with travel agents trying to block purchase 40-50 seats and our commercial departments must act, as it creates superficial demand in the market which drives the prices up for the end consumer.”
The new streams of revenue are of course commonplace elsewhere in the world, however, there has been no emphasis placed on these elements in Kyrgyzstan. The airline even faced back lash from the local industry when they moved to amend their policy so that no-show passengers were no longer being refunded. “We received great pressure from the travel fraternity to reverse this change, but we’ve stood our ground as its standard practice around the world as the cost is still incurred by the airline.” Singh noted. “Over time the industry has slowly aligned to adopt this change.”
On the technical front the airline is also going through a period of change. There are no heavy maintenance providers in the country, and worldwide maintenance shops are giving up their licenses for the Avro and MD types are their numbers dwindle. In this aspect the airline has been left with no choice but to send their aircraft abroad to a finite number of organisations in Europe and the US. For their everyday line-maintenance, the airline has relied exclusively on an abnormally high number of Category B licensed engineers. These personnel are qualified to conduct all levels of servicing and repair works, however unlike major carriers, the business has solely relied on these highly skilled and expensive personnel to conduct all aspects of line maintenance down to simplest tasks. “There were no Category A or technicians which I found unusual as we were only employing highly skilled staff to do all tasks.” Singh remarked. “Premium staff were carrying out wheel changes and flying onboard for transit checks which is not standard elsewhere. We are working to change the structure to have a small team of Cat B senior engineers supporting Cat A and technician staff. It’s been a hard adjustment as the culture here has been to employ solely fully skilled personnel rather than promote progression by training up staff in-house to achieve their qualifications.”
The Last Mad Dog
By late 2024 there was still no sign of calm in the global leasing market, leaving TezJet with no choice but to begin looking for alternatives to their intended Airbus or Boeing narrowbody acquisition. With the McDonnell Douglas MD-83 already on strength, along with the associated personnel and maintenance experience, the airline dispatched a team to the desert of New Mexico to assess the ex-American Airlines MD-83 fleet which had been parked up at Roswell in long-term storage since their retirement in 2019. The Kyrgyz CAA has a restriction where passenger aircraft over 25-years old cannot be imported, which left only a finite number of airframes from the end of the MD-80 production feasible to join the fleet as the timeframe closed in.
TezJet completed the acquisition of their second MD-83 in January 2025 - Manufacturer Serial Number (MSN) 53634 which is notable as being the last ever MD-80 to come off the production line at Long Beach, California in December 1999. The same aircraft also flew the last American Airlines commercial flight with the Mad Dog, operating flight AA80 between Dallas Fort Worth and Chicago on 4th September 2019 before being ferried to Roswell the same day. Following a satisfactory check by the Kyrgyz CAA, TezJet completed the purchase through American firm World Aviation Services who ferried the aircraft to Saltillo, Mexico for all the restorative post-storage works to be carried out. The aircraft required a substantive overhaul following 5 years in the desert; structural repairs, landing gear overhaul, engine replacements plus corrosion and safety component checks were completed prior to gaining the new green TezJet colours. In May 2025 the company president travelled to Mexico to accompany the aircraft to its new home and provided his account of the preparations which had been months in the making:
“We feel very privileged to now be a part of aviation history operating the last production MD-83. Alongside the heavy maintenance to bring the aircraft back to service, it also presented us with an interesting and unusual problem. Since this was the last one to be retired by American Airlines, all their staff had gone into the cabin with permanent markers and left signatures and farewell messages on every single panel. It was of course a nice gesture, as they believed the aircraft would never fly again, but it created a problem for us as we needed to get the entire cabin interior repainted. We have chosen to leave one signature on the window at seat 3A which we will preserve, along with the new “Last Mad Dog” decals at the L1 Door to commemorate the aircraft’s history.”
The 8000-mile delivery flight commenced on 18th May 2025 with the journey routing Saltillo (Mexico) – Laredo (Mexico) – Roswell (USA) - Goose Bay (Canada) - Prestwick (Scotland) -Varna (Bulgaria) – Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan). Singh revealed that the airlines grand plans to unveil the new airliner were short-lived due to the huge social media following the flight obtained: “We had hoped to make a big reveal for the new aircraft and corporate colours on our social media channels, however we noticed half-way through the delivery that it was the most-tracked aircraft that day on FlightRadar24 with over 51,000 viewers. We were being inundated with photos produced by aviation enthusiasts at every stop as the aircraft made its way east, so the story had already broken by the time we finally arrived in Bishkek. I’ve been involved in obtaining aircraft throughout my career, but this experience has been fantastic, and it’s proven to me these aircraft are a true workhorse. It’s been the best and most memorable acquisition of my career, which I of course never expected to be a Mad Dog”.
Future Aspirations
Despite the hurdles and multiple challenges to overcome, Mr. Singh and his team are eager to continue enhancing their service and route offerings. Acknowledging the aircraft are getting old and requiring a lot of care to keep them operational, the company’s short term goal of fleet modernisation remains: “Although we have introduced another MD-83, we are still actively evaluating to induct another aircraft type in the fleet which has easier availability of spare parts, easier technical manpower training and lower direct operating costs” Singh said. “The RJ85 is probably the best performing aircraft for STOL (short take-off and landing) with no present-day aircraft coming close to its performance, however, the problem is that they consume a lot of fuel and entail high maintenance costs. For example, we procured new brakes which cost 3 times the equivalent part for an Airbus A320. We operate to some regional destinations which have short runways, so the pilots need to step on the brakes as soon as they touchdown. As a result, the brake heat pads degrade extremely fast, and the maintenance cost associated per seat rockets as there’s only 96 seats to spread the costs, compared to over 160 on an Airbus A320.”
In terms of international traffic to Kyrgyzstan, the heavy lifting is conducted by airlines like Turkish, Flydubai or Aeroflot, with foreign carriers holding an 80% share of inbound traffic from abroad. The participation of Kyrgyz airlines in international travel is very low which was identified as a development opportunity by Singhs team prior to arriving in the country. TezJet previously operated to multiple international destinations in years gone by, however the new management team opted to cut routes as the carrier’s high destination to aircraft ratio was unsustainable and some of these produced a low RASK (Revenue per Available Seat per Kilometre). The domestic market in Kyrgyzstan is very healthy with flight load factors averaging over 85% meaning the airline has taken a cautious approach to determine the correct routes and frequencies to achieve international success in the long-term. With the additional aircraft coming on strength, regulatory approvals are underway to expand out with the country: “We have traffic rights to operate to 8 different countries (China, Georgia, UAE, Turkey, Russia, Uzbekistan, India and Tajikistan) with the approvals amounting to 200 flights per week.” Singh said. As of July 2025, TezJet has applications in progress to operate flights to destinations in two countries with average block times of 3-4 hours. The airline said they are looking forward to announcing these upon the completion of the CAA processes in each of the respective countries.
