At about 18:38 on Sunday 27 September 2026, the little radar on my desk showed an aircraft at 8,525 feet. The label read Airbus A321neo, registration EI-KGI, route LHR→ALA, callsign KZR664: an Air Astana flight from Heathrow to Almaty. The label stayed up for a little under eight seconds, which I checked frame by frame, before the display moved on. On 4 October 2026 it is two years since Air Astana started flying that route nonstop.

What Air Astana announced

On 25 September 2024 Air Astana announced that its Almaty to Heathrow flights would go nonstop from 4 October, ending the technical stop it had been making at Aktau. It said the change was possible because it was installing additional fuel tanks on its A321LRs, and that it planned to modify six aircraft. CAPA's headline in August 2025 said the airline had completed its A321LR modification programme.

The tanks

The A321LR is the long-range version of the A321neo. In October 2018 Airbus announced that EASA and the FAA had certified the A321neo for up to three Additional Centre Tanks, where the A321 family could previously take two. With three, Airbus said, the A321LR can fly up to 4,000 nautical miles with 206 passengers.

Air Astana's A321LRs started with two. In July 2023 its chief executive, Peter Foster, said a third would add 300 to 350 nautical miles of range at full payload. Aerotelegraph reported at launch that the nonstop service used that third tank, on five aircraft. The airline's announcement, as ch-aviation reported it, said only "additional fuel tanks", and none of the sources I found says which registrations carry them, so I can't tell you whether EI-KGI is one.

The numbers

At launch the timetable gave Almaty to Heathrow as up to 9 hours 35 minutes, and the route was reported as one of the longest flown by the A321neo family. Air Astana's A321LRs seat 166: 16 in business and 150 in economy.

On what the nonstop saved, the reports differ. ch-aviation said about 90 minutes. Simple Flying, comparing timetables, came out nearer 55. I would treat it as a range rather than a figure.

Still flying

Flight listings on Avionio, retrieved on 2 October 2026, show KC664 from Heathrow to Almaty scheduled on 22, 25, 26, 27 and 29 September, each as a single flight. The 27 September one was due to leave at 18:05 and is shown landing at Almaty at 06:06 local time the next morning.

About EI-KGI

EI-KGI is listed as an A321-271NX(LR), manufacturer serial number 10902, delivered in December 2022. The EI- prefix is Irish. I don't know why this particular aircraft is registered there, and I haven't found a source that says.

What I did find is the general arrangement. In May 2021 ch-aviation reported that Air Astana was moving its Aruban-registered aircraft onto the Irish register, under an agreement between the Irish and Kazakh aviation authorities in which the Irish regulator issues the certificates of airworthiness and the Kazakh authority keeps the rest of the oversight. EI-KGI was delivered about 19 months after that report, already carrying an Irish registration. Aircraft databases disagree about which lessor owns it, so I haven't named one.

About the pictures

The photograph of EI-KGI is by S5A-0043 and shows it at Heathrow on 17 June 2025; its Commons description gives the flight as KC664 to Almaty. The other three show different Air Astana A321s: a wingtip at Almaty on 11 July 2026 (the photographer calls it an A321LR), and EI-KDC at Almaty and EI-KDD at Amsterdam, both from 2023 and both A321neos that are not LRs. None was taken on 27 September.

Have you flown Air Astana's A321LR between Almaty and Heathrow? I'd like to know how a flight of nine hours or so felt in a single-aisle jet.

Sources