Summary
- Helping with the country's tourism drive, Uzbekistan Airways will have five weekly Tashkent-New York JFK flights this summer.
- Its prior record was four weekly; not a big jump, but significant for this 'different' route.
- The airline carried about 70,000 roundtrip JFK passengers in the past 12 months to September 2023, with an average seat load factor of 77%.
Uzbekistan Airways is perhaps the most 'unusual' scheduled passenger airline serving North America. It has done so for nearly 30 decades, obviously partly for political reasons. For years, flights stopped en route in Europe, mainly at Belgrade or Riga, using the A310-300 and later the 767-300ER. However, the first non-stop was in 2017 using the Boeing 787-8, with service entirely non-stop the following year.
Tashkent to New York JFK
The Central Asian airline, which gets so little attention aviation-wise, plans five weekly Tashkent to JFK flights from July. While this might not seem like a 'wow' moment, it is significant for the route.
Now scheduled and bookable, analysis of OAG data shows that flights have risen from three weekly in the peak of summer 2019 and from the previous record of four weekly last summer. The Silk Road nation of Uzbekistan is on a big tourism push, and this development seems to be part of it.
Covering 6,338 miles (10,201 km), Flightradar24 shows that the long route often takes 12 to 13 hours to JFK (flying into the wind) and up to two hours less on the way back. From July onwards, the five-weekly service is scheduled as follows, with all times local:
- Tashkent to JFK: HY101, 06:45-10:55 (13h 10m block)
- JFK to Tashkent: HY102, 12:55-09:55+1 (12h)
Thank goodness for small mercies: HY103/HY104 will not operate this summer. The return leg (HY104) left JFK at the joyful time of 03:10 on Saturdays. Adding to the fun, it arrived in Tashkent at 00:10+1.
Uzbekistan Airways to JFK
Analysis of US Department of Transportation's T-100 data for the 12 months to September 2023 shows that Uzbekistan Airways carried 69,919 roundtrip JFK passengers. Thanks to higher frequencies, traffic increased by a quarter compared to the 2019 calendar year.
While T-100 information shows it had a 79% seat load factor (SLF) in 2019, it fell to 77% in the year to September. The additional traffic did not keep pace with the higher capacity. SLF is just one part of the performance puzzle and should not be considered in isolation. Still, 77% was lower than the average of all international routes from JFK (83%).
Uzbekistan Airways is a point-to-point (P2P) airline poorly set up for connections. Given this, it is unsurprising that most passengers – about 60,000 of the 70,000, so 86% – were P2P. They only flew between New York and Tashkent. Only a small number of people transferred to another Uzbekistan Airways flight in Tashkent or to another airline in JFK.
Where transfer passengers went
In the 12 months to September, nearly all connecting passengers over Tashkent flew JFK-Samarkand and JFK-Moscow. This latter is due to Russian sanctions, which ended US-Russia non-stops and most options via Europe.
Flying via Tashkent to reach Moscow is particularly notable as it covers 72% more distance than a non-stop service. It adds 3,359 miles (5,406 km) each way, equivalent to flying one-way between London Heathrow and JFK.
What other carriers at JFK would you like to see service grow? Let us know in the comments section.