Reading this subsection, we may see that for the first eight years, the administration of President Karimov also tried to promote an air transport-oriented tourism strategy. The reason why the Uzbek Government eventually decided to conduct the main transformation in tourism for diversifying the local economy and creating post-Soviet identity was the possession of well-established 7500 historic attractions in 10 major towns [8]. The most important part of that decision became the creation of the state tourism organization called “Uzbektourism”, which was in charge of: i) firstly and mainly, performing the duties of the former Soviet tourism organization “Intourist”, ii) development of tourism policy, iii) licensing and control of private tourism enterprises, iv) privatization and commercialization of large state-owned tourism companies, v) tourism promotion [9].

Later, as an indication of good motives, President Karimov [10] signed the Degree in 1995 where it is outlined that Uzbektourism should tightly cooperate with UzAfor the betterment of air transport tourism. And thus, both state companies were sharing offices in foreign cities where UzA could carry out direct flights and started representing the travel industry of Uzbekistan. Airey & Shackley [8] were the first ones, who recorded the intensified cooperation between Uzbektourism and UzA, and the successful start of the heritage-based tourism industry on the Silk Road cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. However, the transition from a planned to a market economy air transport tourism industry, as well as in all strategic sectors, went smoothly only until 1999.

The 1999 Tashkent bombings on 16 February was an assassination attempt on the First President Islam Karimov. According to the theory of authors, in the face of the ever-growing threat from Afghanistan in connection with the U.S.-Afghan war started in 2001, President Karimov used the Soviet conservative approach, isolating the country and restricting access to it from abroad to preserve peace in the country and protect its borders. Later, even so, his internal affairs were not sympathized by Western countries, ‘foreign affairs must be judged as one of his successes’ [11].

The government needs to appoint the sovereign borders of the country both on earth and space, and the role of transport in this process has great significance [12]. As the new president in 1991, Islam Karimov had to fulfill this task and thereby strengthen the independence of the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Uzbek national carrier, operating 75% of all flights from/to Uzbekistan, was not created for commercial purposes; it was responsible for meeting the needs of the Uzbek people in air transport within the republic, ensuring air safety and creating the country's aviation code. Even though it was hard for the company to survive in a market economy with the Soviet conservative approach in air transportation, it was the correct initial decision taken by the government, as it was necessary to solve domestic needs first. To protect the uncompetitive UzA in those days, the Uzbek government banned any type of foreign ownership in the aviation industry [13]. The restriction of foreign ownership is needed because of concerns that the system may be subordinate to the interests of other countries rather than of its own one. The US government, for instance, gives foreign investors the right to own only 49% of airline companies, but with a control of 25% [12].

When it comes to modernization, the UzA began to include the Airbus A-310s in order to replace the aging Soviet fleet and besides the flights to former Soviet Union states, domestic airports, and to new 20 destinations in Europe, North America and Asia in 1997 [8].The number of companies providing air transport services reached 23 by 2006, but the foreign carriers showed the minimum frequency of scheduled flights due to visa restrictions on Uzbek nationals and visa requirements from the Uzbek government for foreign visitors (Appendix A, Appendix B). UzA continued to be protected by the government and thus became dominant in the air transportation market, including ground infrastructure, which in turn caused many complaints and became the reason for lagging behind world practice. The national air company was never able to reach a level of three million passengers during Karimov’s presidency. The average passenger turnover of UzA from the pre-crisis year 2008 to the end of 2014 was 2.2 million.

Fig. (1). The analytical framework. Source: Lohmann et al., 2009(26).

The last problem is the lack of interlining arrangements of UzA and not being part of internationally recognized airline alliances, which always caused to “divert traffic to foreign carriers”, especially Russian and Turkish ones. Membership in any of the three alliances gives great privileges, such as transporting passengers to any destination in the world. With the help of Korean Air, UzA has been discussing the issue of joining SkyTeam since 2008 [14] and has not yet entered due to trivial reasons, such as standardizing the frequent flyer program in accordance with alliance standards.

The monopolistic status of the UzA couldn’t remain unshakable, so ADB [15] in cooperation with the Japanese Special Fund accomplished the first thorough analysis of the whole transport sector of Uzbekistan in 2007, where experts noted the list of critical barriers to transport development and then a set of action plans to prevent future inefficient investments and take reasonable measures in the transport sector of Uzbekistan in the 2006-2020 time frames. Unfortunately, the recommendations in the report were mainly implemented in the railway and road sectors. Only at the end of 2016, the listed critical barriers and action plans regarding air transport development (Appendix B, Appendix C) attracted the attention of the new presidential administration.

In 1997, Broeze [16] emphasized that seaports are the pillars for the stable development of the economy, culture and social life in the city and country. In the 20th century, airports became a rescue for landlocked countries. Plus, if one pays attention to the leading cities in tourism, they all have another similar feature - developed airports.

The most developed airport in Uzbekistan is Capital Airport, which is called Tashkent International Airport (IATA code: TAS). TAS is the most interconnected in Uzbekistan and Central Asia due to the number of connections to other airports in the world, but not the most accessible due to the small number of flights compared to the airports of Almaty, Astana and Bishkek. Capital Airport is divided into three terminals: Terminal 1 is for state visits; Terminal 3, with a capacity of 400 passengers per hour, is intended for local flights; and Terminal 2 is the main one for handling international departures and arrivals. TAS takes over two-thirds of the total passenger traffic in the country and has a connection with 10 local airports and other 50 airports in the world – it serves as the main air-gateway to Uzbekistan. While other Central Asian countries have two air-gateways, Uzbekistan has only Capital Airport TAS. In a country where almost half of the population of Central Asia lives, it is necessary to have one more node on the map. A well-designed air transport network with the second air-gateway may give a tremendous impetus and make the Uzbek city of that gateway a more attractive destination, thus it would contribute to regional development and play an important role in the revitalization.

The fact that other local airports only a few air routes means the air network controlled by UzA is insufficient for overseas and domestic travel purposes. The first issue towards air network development is that the ten local airports are connected through TAS. This hub-and-spoke route system is efficient if passengers want to continue their journey “to a wide geographic area” [17]. Even if in many cases socially important domestic flights from Uzbekistan’s spoke airports may be disadvantageous and unprofitable but they take passengers to hub airport TAS, from where people fly to other hub airports such as Moscow, Beijing, or Frankfurt-am-Main and that international flight may be profitable. However, traveling in a narrow geographic area, for example, within Uzbekistan, the hub-and-spoke route system is not rational because of unacceptable total travel time between any city-pairs. In order to find an answer to the present situation, ADB [15] proposed to rationalize the air network by restructuring or dispensing with unnecessary airports, especially in Fergana valley (see Fig. 2). The Kokand airport (ICAO code: UTKK), for instance, might be a good example. UTKK and the other three airports in Fergana valley were used during Soviet times as points of departure for cotton. After independence in 1991, the need for the airport is almost gone, so UTKK officially ceased to be available for civil aircraft in the early 2000s. Even finding three airports in a small valley is not a practical decision nowadays since UzA always keeps surviving on state subsidies.

Besides the issue mentioned above, UzA implements excessive safety control checks at the Uzbek airports reducing the free time of passengers, which they could spend at duty-free shops or eateries. In turn, it reduces the overall productivity and net profit of the airport. In 2015, Ülkü [18] mentioned that public authorities tend to control airport services based on social and demographic considerations, but in comparison with Uzbekistan, the control in other countries is minimal.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the current President, served as Prime Minister under Islam Karimov for 13 years. But, like all local politicians, he was in the shadow of the first person of the state. 13 years of administrative experience at the Cabinet of Ministers gave Shavkat Mirziyoyev a colossal and thorough knowledge of internal political and internal economic processes. As soon as he succeeded Karimov after his death in September 2016, there have been several positive changes, such as decreased export duties, the improving situation in agriculture and weakening the influence of the state on small business. The sector that received the most attention was tourism. President Mirziyoyev established a State Committee for Tourism Development, which should be in charge of “implementation to increase the contribution of tourism in GDP, local budget revenues, employment, and the quality and standard of living of the population”. The next step in the industry step turned the liberalization process of the country's visaregime.

Fig. (2). List of the UzA airports and their passenger traffic. Source: UzA; Great Circle Mapper.

In the past, the citizens of 8 countries had only visa-free access to Uzbekistan. And as of February 10, 2018, impressive changes in visa policy started for citizens of Israel, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Turkey. The government granted access to them to enter Uzbekistan without any visa up to 30 days. Table 1 shows that the process of visa liberalization did not stop at adding only 7 countries. Just in the period 2016-2017, the increased amount of tourists by almost 32% showed the nation that the actions taken by the current presidential administration are justified (Table 2). However, the statistic of 2018 proves more the effectiveness of the decree.

Linking section 3 and section 4, the authors explored that the idea of making tourism a strategic sector of the economy was borrowed from the experience of the first years of Karimov’s presidency. However, in the case of the Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the reforms are large-scale - the improvement of the investment climate in the country, the strengthening of friendly relations with neighboring countries, and not drifting among great powers [19-21].

The location of Uzbekistan might make UzA a profitable airline, as numerous potential customers on the route South-East Asia – Europe might generate high travel demand. Low labor costs in combination with its renewed fleet, currently consisting of B787-8 and A320neo, might contribute to the national carrier’s success. However, the rush to reorganize the airline is unacceptable, since other two Central Asian state-owned carriers, Air Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan Airlines, went bankrupt in 2004 and 2005 [22]. Moreover, Air Kyrgyzstan and Tajik Air have also experienced financial losses for several years and stopped carrying passengers in 2018 and 2019. Therefore, the transformation of UzA has been discussed for years should be done gradually and carefully. The air transport reforms started by President Mirziyoyev may be divided in two stages.

The company continued to exist as a state body for civil aviation at the first stage. The aviation market of Uzbekistan started actively opening after the current presidential administration set the tasks of attracting more foreign investment and a radical improvement in transport services for the population in the framework of state program ‘Development Strategy for 2017-2021’, so the national carrier increased the number of flights for Uzbek citizens to the following well-known destinations such as Almaty, Nur-Sultan, Istanbul, Seoul and the whole Russian Federation. Therewith the Russian carriers – Nordstar, Red Wings Airlines and Nordwind Airlines– began to fly into the country. Furthermore, on October 18, 2016, UzA initiated the online booking and payment of airfare services through “UzCard” bank cards, one year later through “Visa” cards and starting from November 9, 2018, to the existing online payment methods “MasterCard” was added [23,24]. The first stage – the period 2017–2018 – demonstrated that UzA increased efficiency and passenger traffic through reforms without company restructuring or its privatization (Table 3).

The first phase of policy reforms made also a difference to the Uzbek airports. For instance, as of June 15, 2018, Terminal 2 of TAS has been noticeably improved by merging are constructed old building for local flights to increase its capacity to 1,200 arriving passengers per hour. It became the last upgrade for Capital Airport, as later it was determined TAS has no growth opportunities due to its location in the city center like in the cases of the former Singaporean International Airport Paya Labar (QPG) and the former Turkish Istanbul Ataturk Airport (ISL) [25,26]. Because of well-done timely decisions by the governments of Turkey and Singapore, they could maintain and enlarge traffic flow to their capitals. The Uzbek authorities relying on the experiences of foreign colleagues concluded to establish a new additional airport uptownon the basis of the “Tashkent-Vostochny” airfield until the year 2020. The new airport should serve for civil and business aviation to ensure the organization of meetings and send-offs of foreign delegations at the highest level.

What about other airports? The international airports of Samarkand, Bukhara and Urgench started having simplified procedures of border control, baggage claim and customs clearance due to the presidential decree. S7 Airlines and Turkish Airlines launched new regular flights to Samarkand, thereby creating an additional air-gateway. Fig. (2) shows that the approach of dispensing with five airports, Andizhan, Navoi, Karshi, Termez and Nukus, should be applied. It would reduce costs since UzA keeps surviving on state subsidies and the aforementioned airports showed the smallest result in the absolute ratio in their regions but the second phase of President Mirziyoyev’s policy reforms was aimed at solving the issue.

In order to de-monopolize air transportation in Uzbekistan and thereby make UzA commercial and independent from government subsidies, President Mirziyoyev signed the Decree “On Measures for the radical Improvement of Civil Aviation of the Republic of Uzbekistan” [27], which started integrating the recommendations of JSF and ADB in aviation into the legislative practice, as the government came to realize the outdated and non-transparent management system combining the functions of state regulation and commercial activity would not allow introducing the modern management system at the enterprises of the industry, ensuring their financial stability and profitability.

According to the degree above,on the basis of the national air carrier UzA, one aims to establish two new Joint-Stock Companies (JSC), “Uzbekistan Airways” and “Uzbekistan Airports”, and several Limited Liability Companies (LLC), “Uzbekistan Helicopters”, “Uzbekistan Air Technics”, “Catering” and “Training Centre”. The centre of “Uzair navigation” and “Civil Aviation Agency” started providing their services under the supervision of the Ministry of Transport of Uzbekistan. Separation of powers on air surveillance, air navigation, certification and airport services into separate independent structures gave the concept that an airport is no longer a strategic object.

The airports became commercial enterprises and the state can use them only when necessary for state purposes or in emergencies. Uzbekistan Airports JSC is granted the right to determine and set rates and fees for services provided by the airport, with the exception of services provided to resident airlines. In addition, the air harbors gained the right to expand and modernize the infrastructure necessary for storing aviation fuel and oil and lubricants of the airport, as well as enter into contracts with local or foreign legal entities for the supply of aviation fuel and oil and lubricants for their implementation domestic or foreign airlines operating flights to international airports of the country, including transit. The document also states that from October 1, 2019, in accordance with international legal standards, the Open Skies mode is introduced at Karshi, Nukus and Termez international airports using the “fifth air freedom”, as well as Bukhara using “fifth air freedom” when transporting foreign nationals. Perhaps this decision of the government will help solve the financial problem of the first three airports mentioned above [28].

The airports of Samarkand, Namangan and Urgench may be modernized and developed by the Russian holding company “Novaport” but neither the Uzbek government nor Novaport disclose the volume of investments and the scale of the transformation. The first airport to undergo reconstruction is Samarkand. In 2022, the city will host the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which will be the first major international event in the city for the entire post-Soviet period [29,30].