Starting 20 October, SCAT Airlines will operate the Shymkent–Singapore route — Kazakhstan's first direct air link to the city-state.
The flight is not technically nonstop: the aircraft makes a technical stop in Sanya, China. The Shymkent–Sanya leg takes about 6.5 hours, followed by a roughly two-hour transit in the airport's sterile zone without Chinese immigration control, then another three hours to Singapore. Total travel time is around 11 hours.
Flights operate on Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft, with a hot meal on the outbound Shymkent leg and a light lunch on the Sanya–Singapore segment. Tickets are already on sale via scat.kz.
For SCAT, this marks its first entry into Southeast Asia via a Chinese transit hub — a model not previously used by Central Asian carriers on this route. Sanya functions here as an intermediate hub rather than a destination, extending the long-haul reach of a regional airline's network.