Tashkent's new airport will have its work cut out to be the regional leader, despite solid support

The race has been on to locate the site for, and build, a regional hub airport for the CIS countries, those that escaped the clutches of the Soviet Union in the 1990s but initially remained tied to Russia's command economy model.

Latterly, buoyed by oil, gas and mineral wealth (albeit not on the scale people might imagine), some of these countries - the 'Stans' as they are colloquially known - have acquired strong economies and GDP growth, and are increasingly attracting foreign inward investment.

And their location on the map is as central as it gets.

Some of their national airlines have grown rapidly, and private sector investors have started to look more closely at the prospects for the airports.

It has become clear that a hub airport for the 100 million plus people in the region outside Russia would make sense And the first mover is Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, where a PPP will see the government work with a consortium of Korea's Incheon International Airport Corporation (IIAC), Japan's Sojitz Corporation and Invest Vision, a Saudi Arabian developer and investor across public and private investors, to build a new airport.

On the surface, it's a dream team, and already IIAC is talking about the "second and third Incheon airports", referring to Tashkent and the Urgench airport. The airport serves a religious tourism area, which is a tad optimistic, even though there are positive factors in place such as a fast-growing airline and comprehensive network at the existing airport.

But it isn't a region given over to one country taking precedence over another, which is what can happen when a hub airport is designated in these circumstances.