Thai Airways Route Table, A-G, November 2016

Echoing a post from earlier this week, Thai Airways has kept up its tradition of matrixing its entire route network in the back pages of its in-flight magazine. Details include the mileage, flight time, time zone, and even the local contact number. Comparing to the 2013 version, the increased number of Chinese cities, such as Changsha and Chongqing, is most obvious. 

The entire table will be covered in the following series of posts. 

Muscat Airport: Arrivals on 12 December, 2015

An unfortunately blurry image of the mid-day arrivals screens for Muscat International Airport on 12 December 2015. Dominated, naturally, by Oman Air, with multiple incoming flights from nearby Abu Dhabi, Doha, Dubai, Kuwait, and Makkah, and a spread of subcontinental landings from Delhi, Chennai, Karachi, Colombo, Bangalore, Jaipur, Lahore, Calicut and Male. Longer range operations such as Bangkok and the Singapore-Kuala Lumpur operation arrive at about 1PM, with one of the few domestic flights, from Salalah, come in twice that afternoon. Air Arabia to Sharjah and flydubai put low-cost, short-haul operations on the board. 

Frankfurt Airport Departures, August 2012

Just twenty minutes of mid-weekday activity at Frankfurt Airport in late August 2012, showing departures (mostly of Lufthansa, naturally) as near as Salzburg and as far away as Kuala Lumpur on Malaysia Airlines and Charlotte on USAirways.

Air Mauritius Network, c.2011

Air Mauritius, Africa's fourth-largest airline, has an admirable reach across four continents. Especially impressive are the links with three Australian and three South African cities, the four largest hubs of India (bridging the sizable South Asian diaspora on the island state) and the cluster of long routes to Europe: six major gateways in five countries, plying the high-end tourist trade. Shanghai had just been added at the time of this map's publication, and two grey circles detail code-share set-ups which reach deep into westernmost Europe and southeast Asia. Unfortunately, since this graphic was drawn, some of this spread has retreated: Kuala Lumpur, Milan, Sydney and Melbourne are all sadly departed.

Air India: International Routes, c. 2012

Air India's global reach appears more comprehensive at first than it really is given this map's format. Once it is understood that the red lines indicate other air carriers, Air India's operations are in proper perspective: most of the cities on the map are unnecessary, including those such as Chicago which Air India served for years but flies to no more. In fact, the state carrier of one of the world's largest countries incredibly serves fewer than 25 international cities. Note the non-stop from Frankfurt to Amritsar, and another from Bangalore to Singapore, and that Kolkata has no international services. The world of Air India is rather diminutive.

The following post will detail the inset of the Middle Eastern routes.

Oman Air: Worldwide Network, 2011: Detail #2: The Subcontinent

Oman Air is in all ways a smaller iteration of the Gulf's burgeoning supercarriers. This similarity includes an expansive array of destinations in its South Asian backyard. With far fewer seat-miles to the Subcontinent than its rivals, Oman Air nonetheless offers more than 15 destinations out of Muscat, catering especially to foreign contract workers and shopping trippers.

Please see the two previous posts for more about Oman Air's current network, worldwide and in the Middle East.