Central Asia may soon get its first scheduled US airline service. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has named Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as destinations the carrier is eyeing "down the road", revealing on the Cheeky Pint podcast that Patrick Quayle, United's SVP of Global Network Planning, travelled to both countries this year to scope them out. No US carrier has ever flown scheduled passenger routes to either nation.
The catch is timing. US airlines have been banned from Russian airspace since March 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. That forces American carriers into longer, costlier routings to reach Central Asia and raises operational questions around diversions. Kirby was upfront that United cannot make it work today — but the interest is genuine.
Geography helps the case. Almaty, Kazakhstan's main gateway, and Tashkent, Uzbekistan's primary international airport, sit roughly 420 miles apart, so a single flight could serve both cities — much like Lufthansa's combined Frankfurt service to Almaty and Astana. An East Coast departure, most plausibly from Newark Liberty, would shave hours off a West Coast routing.
Demand already exists inside United's own network. Kirby pointed out that many passengers on United's flights to Frankfurt and Munich — where around 60% of travellers connect onward — continue to Kazakhstan on partner airlines. United also has form in the region: in May 2025 it launched a seasonal Tokyo Narita–Ulaanbaatar route, becoming the first US airline to serve Mongolia, after spotting that roughly 12% of passengers on one Tokyo flight were connecting there.
For now, the only nonstop passenger link between the US and Central Asia is Uzbekistan Airways' Boeing 787 service between Tashkent and New York JFK, running up to five times weekly in summer. Kazakhstan has no nonstop US flights, though Air Astana hopes to launch a New York route next year — pending an FAA Category 1 safety rating and the same Russian airspace complications. If it gets off the ground, Air Astana is open to codesharing with a US carrier.
Why should travellers care? If you have roots in the region, business there, or simply want to see Samarkand's Registan or Almaty's mountains without backtracking through Europe or the Gulf, a US nonstop would be a genuine game-changer. Nothing is imminent, but the fact that United's network chief has already visited both cities suggests the idea is moving — slowly — from wish list to feasibility study. Watch this space, and in the meantime, the Tashkent–JFK Dreamliner remains the only direct option.
