Icelandair: Your way to Norway, 2011

Continuing to look at Icelandic air carriers in the 21st century, here is a magazine advert for Icelandair, specifically highlighting the airline's service to four Norwegian airports: Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, and Trondheim. The top of the page lists, in no particular order, Icelandair's 19 other European destinations from Glasgow to Alicante. That number has today nearly doubled above 35 cities, counting a number of seasonal services. 

Wow Air Network, 2015

 Continuing the wake for PLAY, here we see the fullest extent of its predecessor, the Barney-purple world of WOW Air. Thinner than either its successor or its flag-carrier rival, Icelandair, with only 2 routes across the Atlantic, to Boston and Washington-Dulles. Like the other two, familiar outstations include Tenerife, Salzburg, and Warsaw, while WOW's unique reach included Lyon and Vilnius. 

Azerbaijan Airlines Timetable, 2016 (Post 1 of 2)

Another page from the back of the Azerbaijan Airlines in-flight magazine, which publishes the state carrier's entire schedule—somewhat rare for an airline seat-back pocket. 

The schedule here shows a regular roster of flights to major European airports—once- or twice-weekly services to Barcelona, Berlin, Milan, and Prague, as well as more frequent flights to London (with one of the airline's widebody Dreamliners), Paris, as well as twice-weekly service to Tel Aviv and a flight to Dubai each morning. Elsewhere in Asia is the mid-night service to the Caspian oil town of Aktau, two hours away in Kazakhstan, via an Embraer E190, and the great eastern route: the thrice-weekly B787 Dreamliner service to Beijing. This is complimented by the airline's premier service, the Dreamliner's transatlantic long-haul to New York-JFK.  

AZAL Azerbaijan Airlines Network, mid-2016

Following on the previous post, by staying in the trans-Caspian region: here is the route map of another post-Soviet, Central Asian flag carrier, Azerbaijan Airlines, a rather convoluted web of polychrome routes, four different color markers for barely three dozen destinations including an array of code-shares.

Ignoring the third-party services, there are the main line routes themselves—labeled AZAL, the alternative acronym for the state airline—in a dark purple, an eclectic roster of cities across three continents, including, Barcelona, Berlin, Milan, Minsk and Prague in Europe to Dubai and Tel Aviv in southwestern Asia and distant Beijing in the east, shown in an inset at right. On the left, the pride of the operation, the non-stop Dreamliner flight from Baku to New York-JFK, which was almost axed last year.

In red are the leisure destinations of the short-lived AZALJET division, mostly to Aegean Turkey including Istanbul, Izmir, Bodrum, Dalaman, Antalya and Ankara, as well as Aktau, Kazakhstan, Tblisi, Tehran, Kazan, Lviv and Kiev. This unit only existed for barely a year, from March 2016 to 2017, before being folded back in to the central operations. 

Norwegian Long Haul: Current and Future Routes, Summer 2017.

It is by now obvious to remark that the world's aviation market is now at the dawn of a golden age of low-cost long-haul flying. While largely pioneered in parts of Australasia, the fast-expanding boom is currently focused on the North Atlantic market, led by the seemingly now-ubiquitous Norwegian Air Shuttle. 

From its first B787 deliveries, the airline has forayed far and wide, first to Fort Lauderdale and New York JFK, then Bangkok. At the beginning of this year, the young but well-funded airline shocked the Northern Hemisphere with the sudden announcement of a huge capacity increase, made possible by the arrival of brand-new next-generation B737Max jets. Norwegian paired off six northwestern European cities: Belfast, Bergen, Cork, Dublin, Edinburgh and Shannon, with three New England airports: Hartford, Providence, and, most surprisingly, Stewart Airport in suburban Westchester County, New York. As can be seen above, the map is now to crowded to follow each individual route line. 

Further complicating comprehension, this route map also has almost as many future destinations as current operations. Over the next twelve months, the ever-growing fleet of red-throated Dreamliners will take to the Scandinavian skies to reach a further four U.S. airports: Austin, Chicago, Denver and Seattle are all scheduled before summer 2018. Norwegian also continues its Southeast Asian expansion with the addition of Gatwick-Singapore in September, going head-to-head with aviation's biggest players in a highly competitive corridor. 

That flight will not be the airline's only super long-haul out of Gatwick. Within the same time frame, Norwegian will also reach its first South American destination, Buenos Aires, from Gatwick. A rather unexpected venture, the route is especially noteworthy not only as Norwegian spreads to yet another continent, but that the airline already has a long-haul base under development at Barcelona, where IAG's brand-new LCLH Level is flying to Buenos Aires, which, furthermore, is in direct competition with legacy flag carrier Aerolineas Argentinas, one of that once-great carrier's few remaining European destinations.

With industry observers already questioning the Norwegian's rapid long-haul expansion and its business practices in general, we'll have to see if Norwegian can really maintain these routes, much less continue its global domination. 

Qatar Airways Route Network, November 2016: Europe (2)

A second post on the same section of Qatar Airway's route map, showing its nearly 40 non-stops to Europe, including four cities in the UK, and three in Italy, including Pisa. 

Emirates Route Map, August 2016: Europe

A thick baobab trunk of routes juts up from Mesopotamia, spreading its boughs across the European continent. With a staggering 37 European destinations, Emirates has blanketed the region with flights even more so than any other portion of the globe, from Moscow to Manchester, Milan to Malta, Madrid to Munich. The depth of its reach is shown in secondary and tertiary markets: Prague, Budapest, Geneva, Lyon, Nice, Oslo, Glasgow, Bologna, and Hamburg are just a handful of third-tier cities which see a wide-body Emirates plane land daily, non-stop from Dubai.

Norwegian Air Shuttle: New Route to Fort Lauderdale from Paris, August 2016

Yesterday's post discussed the acceleration of Newark Airport into an intercontinental gateway beginning around 1990, and the role of a Scandinavian airline in that growth. Here we have a similar circumstance, as the compact Ft. Lauderdale International Airport has grown from a discount, secondary airport into a major intercontinental gateway to balance Miami International in handling trans-ocean traffic into South Florida. 

Ft. Lauderdale's profile was elevated with the appearance of Caribbean and Latin American feeder flights and Canadian snow-bird services. Today, flag carriers now reach Ft. Lauderdale from as far as Colombia, Ecuador, and, since 2014, Brazil. Most recently—and most astonishingly—there is now nonstop service to Dubai, with Emirates commencing non-stop B777 flights this week. Announced barely two months ago, UAE megacarrier chose FLL over Miami as its 11th U.S. gateway due to its inline partnership with Jetblue.

But as impressive as the 14+ flight distances are, a recent development that has greatly raised Ft. Lauderdale as a gateway to Europe has been the arrival of Norwegian Air Shuttle's dreamliners from its Long Haul division. Paris-CDG is the fifth European city that Norwegian is connecting to Broward County, beginning flights this past August. Norwegian will add Barcelona as its sixth non-stop next year. Also announced back in October: British Airways will also start flying from London-Gatwick in 2017, and Condor made the airport part of its nationwide entry into the U.S. market from Frankfurt. 

ČSA Czeckoslovak Airlines Route Map, 1975: Detail of European Routes

A bit more detail on this Czechoslovak Airlines pinwheel from sometime around 1975. Looking at the inner circle, we see Prague connected to a number of European cities of both east and west, from Bucharest to Brussels to Barcelona. Tunis and Malta are looped together (as Emirates does today) and Algiers is shown as a southwestern outliner. 

See the previous post for an overview, and details of the long-haul routes. The next post will also show some detail of the upper-right side of the cartogram.

Air Berlin: The Long-haul Destinations from Munich, summer 2013

A somewhat clever transit-map styling of an Air Berlin wall advert at the Munich Airport U-bahn station, showing the diverse long-haul destinations, which by and large are leisure markets. Four continents are covered: from Phuket and Bangkok in Thailand, and Male in the Maldives, to Mombasa in Kenya and Windhoek in Namibia (the latter two, sadly, seem to have since been dropped from the network). In the Americas, Miami, New York and Los Angeles are complimented by Caribbean resort towns such as Cancún. On the red horizontal line, further sun-and-beach destinations are separated from the more urban trio of Barcelona, Moscow, and Vienna. Strangely, the device isn't carried all the way through, as there is no interchange station in the center where the two lines intersect.

Austrian Airlines: Vienna to Chicago, May 2013

One last in this week's series of new international carriers coming to Chicago, particularly those that are a resumption of previous intercontinental flights: The rather strange homepage graphic is from the website of Austrian Airlines, which this month is due to return to Chicago. The move has long been prudent, to feed into the massive mid-continental links of Star Alliance partner United Air Lines.

But the image above rather clumsily suggests connections not via the Midwest but Mittel-Europa; it has always been Austrian Airlines dream to have Vienna serve as a switch-station to points further east, such as here faraway Delhi or nearby Moscow or Kiev. There probably won't be too many US passengers for Minsk, and why anyone would connect from North America to London or Barcelona via Vienna is curious; better off trying the new-nonstop on PIA for Catalonia, for instance.

Pakistan International Airlines: Chicago-Barcelona-Karachi, June 2013

A final post a news out of Chicago, especially concerning new service to O'Hare featuring the exotic liveries of southwest Asian airlines and unusual fifth-freedom routes. The very nice site boardingarea.com has a feature on Pakistan International Airlines new Chicago-Barcelona service. Flight PK794 then continues on to both Islamabad and Karachi, although Boardingarea.com's post focuses on the extremely reasonable business-class fares to Spain.

The route is actually a resumption of long-standing service from Pakistan to the prairie which was temporarily cut in 2012. The older route included a Lahore stop, which is not in PIA's present plans for 2013.

A special thanks to boardingarea.com for the original reporting and use of the above images. 

Gambia Bird Network, October 2012

We interrupt this blog to bring you West Africa's newest airline: The delightfully sleek Gambia Bird, which, if its own press releases are to be believed, commenced operations today.

Backed by low-cost German carrier Germania Airways, Gambia Bird features A319 services from Banjul, from the 50-minute hop to Dakar to the long haul legs to London Gatwick and Barcelona. Lagos does not seem to be on the schedule quite yet, nor the non-stops between Freetown and London or Monrovia and Accra. But its current timetable does break with the norm and offer more direct non-stops, rather than interline services (the Banjul-Monrovia run does not stop in Freetown or Conakry, for instance).

There's nothing that Timetablist loves more than a new West African airline, and Gambia has been without its own flag-carrier since the disreputable demise of Slok Air in 2008, and stretching back to the proud days of Air Gambia and Gambia Airways.

Swissair: The European Network, c.1951

The routes of Swissair, "to everywhere" only reached as far as Iraq, New York, Spain and Denmark in 1951.

Aegean Airlines: The Western European Routes, Summer 2012

The route map of Aegean Airlines, the private Greek carrier that has zoomed from Start-up to Star Alliance member in a matter of years. Solid-lines denote year-round services, mainly from Athens but also to Germany (Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich) from Thessaloniki, while dashed-lines indicate summer service, which includes flights from Heraklion to Paris, Brussels and Munich.

Ukraine International Airlines Network: Detail of Western Europe

A continuation from the previous post, showing Ukraine International's many western European destinations, including such small airports as Lisbon, Nice, and Bologna. Ukraine International connects from Kiev but also Odessa, Lvov, Donetsk, and Simferopol.

Brussels Airport Departure Board #5

Early evening at Brussels Airport means departures by and large within Western Europe, mostly by Brussels Airlines, along with Air France, British Airways, Alitalia, Iberia and TAP. The only exceptions to this are the Eastern European carriers: Croatia Airlines to Zagreb and TAROM Romanian Airlines to Bucharest. The only non-EU flight is El AL to Tel Aviv at 7:00pm.

Brussels Airport Departure Board # 2

About an hour and half of mid-day flights fill in the bottom of the Zavantem Airport departure boarding. Everything is on schedule except its already known that Ukraine International's flight to Kiev is already running late.

Two of Brussels's handful of East Asian visitors leave in this time period: Hainan Airlines to Beijing and Thai Airways to Bangkok. At quarter past noon, a Tunisair flight to Djerba and Monastir leaves just before Aeroflot's flight to Moscow Sheremetyevo. There is also a 1:30 flight on Syrianair to Damascus via Beirut.

United/Continental's Nonstop B757 Transatlantic Routes Are Stopping, 2012

A map which accompanied a recent Washington Post article on the increasingly-frequent use of narrowbody B757s on increasingly long routes to Europe from the East Coast, which inevitably end up as less than nonstop when facing winter jet streams. The article singles out United/Continental for this colorful graphic, but the text also mentions USAirways routes out of Philadelphia and American Airlines's rampant employment of the 757. The article also lists several unusual airports receiving unscheduled intercontinental flights, such as Bangor, Maine, Albany, and Stewart Airport in Newburgh, New York.

Spanair: International Routes from Barcelona, 2011

Where the previous post's graphic of Spanair's reach from El Prat was fanciful, this is more straightforward: a map of the wide array of Spanair non stops from Barcelona, reaching three continents, including two Sub-Saharan routes to Banjul and Bamako. Prior to its demise, Spanair was expanding rapidly across Africa, although the airline's Wikipedia entry, which lists Dakar and Malabo (but not Banjul) overstates the reach, and seems to conflate Air Europa (which formerly served Malabo and still flies to Dakar) and Spanair. It matters less now, in the wake of Spanair's demise; whatever the destinations, tens of thousands are currently stranded.