Centrum Air Opens Karachi-Tashkent Flights As Pakistan Eyes $2 Billion Trade

KARACHI: Twenty months ago, there was no direct flight between Pakistan and Uzbekistan at all. That changes September 3, when Karachi gets its own non-stop route to Tashkent and the two countries' air links jump to eight flights a week, up from zero less than two years back.

Centrum Air will run the new Karachi–Tashkent service twice weekly, Thursdays and Sundays, on top of an existing schedule of four weekly flights to Lahore and two to Islamabad. Uzbekistan's Ambassador to Pakistan, Alisher Tukhtaev, announced the route to APP in Islamabad on Tuesday, framing it as proof of how fast transport ties between the two countries have moved.

Karachi Tashkent Direct Flights

The timing isn't coincidental. Pakistan and Uzbekistan agreed in February to push annual trade to $2 billion within five years, after bilateral trade closed 2025 at close to $500 million. That target came out of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev's state visit to Islamabad, which produced 28 agreements trade preferences, defence cooperation, industrial ties, and a maritime arrangement giving landlocked Uzbekistan preferential port access at Karachi, Gwadar and Port Qasim. Roughly 230 Pakistani-capital companies already operate inside Uzbekistan, per officials from that visit.

Air Connectivity Supports $2 Billion Trade Goal

Tukhtaev didn't treat the flight as a one-off. He tied it directly to that wider trade push, saying better air links would pull the two populations closer and open fresh room for tourism, trade and cultural exchange.

There's a connectivity angle too, beyond the two cities themselves. Tashkent feeds into onward routes across Central Asia and the CIS, which turns the new Karachi service into more than a point-to-point flight it's an entry point to the wider region for Pakistani travelers.

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Tourism sits at the center of Uzbekistan's pitch here. Samarkand and Bukhara draw the attention centuries of Islamic architecture, Silk Road history most Pakistani travelers have only read about. Add Tashkent's Centre for Islamic Civilization and the Imam Al-Bukhari Memorial Complex near Samarkand, one of the more significant sites in the Muslim world, and the ambassador's tourism argument has some real weight behind it.

Whether flight frequency translates into trade growth is a separate question. Pakistan's own exports to Uzbekistan have trailed Uzbek exports going the other way for years, per trade data from earlier this year a gap that more flights alone won't close. But the ambassador's logic was straightforward: get the connectivity in first, and let investment, tourism and business ties follow behind it.

What's certain is the schedule. From September, Karachi sits alongside Lahore and Islamabad on Centrum Air's Pakistan network giving the country's biggest city its first direct seat on a route to Central Asia in recent memory.