The plan came out of a meeting between Turkmenistan’s ambassador in Brussels, Sapar Palvanov, and Air Belgium’s chief executive, Georges Chachati, who discussed the technical steps and a symbolic first flight in early August. Air Belgium, once a passenger carrier, went bankrupt and was rescued when the French shipping group CMA CGM took over its cargo operations. It now flies Boeing 747-8F and Airbus A330 freighters.
Turkmenistan is selling Ashgabat’s airport as a refuelling and technical stop on the Europe-to-Asia run, and the location is well chosen, midway between the two markets. The catch is the country around the airport. Turkmenistan keeps one of the most restrictive aviation markets in the region, and far fewer foreign carriers serve it than fly to Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan. A hub needs traffic, and traffic needs an openness the state has never offered.
The freighter fits a pattern this desk tracks. Across Central Asia the corridor story is mostly rail and road: the Middle Corridor, the border crossings, the port plots in Iran. Air cargo is the thin, high-value layer on top, and Turkmenistan, boxed out of much of the overland routing and short on transit revenue, has reason to chase it. One Belgian freighter a hub does not make. It is a marker of ambition from a state that rarely shows one, and a test of whether Ashgabat can turn location into throughput.