Tajikistan’s privately owned airline Somon Air has added a second Boeing 737 MAX 8 to its fleet. The aircraft has been named after Abu Abdullah Roudaki, the founder of classical Persian-Tajik literature.
Somon Air received its first Boeing 737 MAX 8 on July 27, 2026.
The new aircraft are initially planned to operate international flights from Dushanbe to Seoul, Beijing, Minsk and London. The airline plans to deploy them on additional routes as its network expands.
The addition of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft is part of Somon Air’s fleet and route-network expansion strategy. The airline has said the aircraft will form the backbone of its fleet for short- and medium-haul routes.
In 2025, Somon Air announced plans to receive new Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in 2026 to support the launch of additional routes, including flights to London, Riyadh, Beijing, Guangzhou and Seoul.
The Boeing 737 MAX 8 is a narrow-body, twin-engine passenger jet and the baseline, most widely ordered model in Boeing’s fourth-generation 737 MAX family. It was developed as the successor to the popular Boeing 737-800 Next Generation and is designed primarily for domestic and medium-haul routes.
Boeing launched the 737 MAX program in response to growing competition from the Airbus A320neo family, which was introduced in 2010. Instead of designing an entirely new aircraft, the company upgraded the existing 737 platform with new engines, aerodynamic improvements and updated systems. This approach allowed airlines already operating Boeing 737 aircraft to retain a high degree of fleet and pilot-training commonality.
Somon Air, which is the first private air carrier in Tajikistan, began operations in February 2008, with regular flights from Dushanbe to Moscow and Dubai. It is a member of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and is based at Dushanbe International Airport.
During the first nine months of 2025, the airline carried about 826,000 passengers, an 11% increase from the same period in 2024. It operated 2,477 flights, 89% of them international, serving 25 scheduled destinations at the time.
Somon Air currently operates regular flights from Tajikistan to Germany, the UAE, Türkiye, China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, India, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
