Imperial Airways, 1937: The African Routes

As with its trans-Asian operations shown yesterday, the technology available to Imperial Airways in the early age of aviation necessitated a series of regular way stations for the royal charter's southerly system spanning Africa.

After the upper Nile, the line made its way to Khartoum, whence it splits, with one line turning to the west: Kano—Lagos—Accra and finally Takoradi, which only has domestic links today. There must have been pitstops in the drylands of French Central Africa but these are unnamed here; the paths of the green routes, connecting Algeria and Morocco to Niger and then the Congo, and reaching across to Madagascar, suggest French operations.

Continuing to follow the Nile south, the Cairo-to-Cape line stopped at Malakal, toady in South Sudan, then fanned across British East Africa in a complex web which appears to shown that one set of services remained inland along the Great Rift, passing through Nairobi on the way to Lusaka, Salisbury (today Harare) and Bulawayo in Rhodesia, and  then finally ending at Johannesburg. 

Another schedule reached the Swahili coast at Mombasa—Dar Es Salaam—(Ma)lindi and coastal Mozambique, with a bridge connection through Nyasaland at Blantyre, passing through Lourenço Marques (today Maputo) to terminate at Durban. The unlabeled green lines with the Union clearly suggest an early-stage South African Airways, reaching both Cape Town and Windhoek. 

South African Airways: the Southern African destinations 2013

Following from the previous post, this promotional brochure shows the ease of connecting to the southern cone of Africa from South African Airways's gateways in Europe: Munich, Frankfurt, and London Heathrow, via Johannesburg. With the map superimposed, these long-haul legs seem mercifully short. Cities in Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique and Malawi are shown, as well as the airline's many domestic destinations. In most cases, especially outside of South Africa, the proposition is to fly from Europe to OR Tambo, passing over a final destination, before tracking back to reach it on a local connection.

Linhas Aereas de Moçambique: Domestic Routes, 2012

Continuing from yesterday's post, the current domestic network of Mozambique's flag carrier shown via an attractively spare Adobe Illustrator job, found on its website. Flights fan out from the capital in the south to nearly every one of its eight national destinations, but every city is connected to at least two others, with several routes running out from the regional centers. Connections criss-cross on the belt at Beira and Quelimane, reaching to the northern capitals of Nampula and Pemba. A route from Tete to distant Lichinga crosses over Malawian airspace.

Linhas Aereas de Moçambique Routes, 2012

The well-tended website of Mozambique's state carrier, Linhas Aereas de Moçambique, features a handsomely spare route map. Although the online image shows the entire globe, LAM's routes are almost entirely confined to southern Africa as shown here. It is therefore curious that Asia and the Americas are included, as LAM serves neither and in fact only recently was able to re-enter the ex-African market with its return to Lisbon this year. There is a strong emphasis on not only other continents but connecting carriers' services, which quite strangely are shown in solid lines on the map, while the airline's own network is only depicted in faint dotted lines: the effect is to blur distinctions and make LAM's own operations diminished.

While the scope of LAM's presence is small, it impressively flies internationally from what appears to be no less than eight of its ten domestic airports: flies to Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam come out of northeastern Nampula and Pemba, whereas Joanesburgo is served from five cities. There is also a nonstop from Maputo to Cape Town. Somewhat strangely, it appears that the flight to Luanda originates from Inhambane, and the flight to Lisbon on LAM's own wings appears to stop in Beira-- perhaps these are cartographic errors?

Air Zimbabwe Schedule from Harare, 1997

The full schedule of Air Zimbabwe services from Harare in 1997 shows 17 destinations on at least two, possibly three continents. The typical timetable handbook format, used around the world by many airlines, often presents some curious itineraries: as in this instance it is difficult to contemplate such a volume of passengers between Zimbabwe and, say, Salt Lake City, or Tampa, or Klagerfurt, or Barbados, to warrant taking up the space (and expending the printing costs).

This is particularly true as the state carrier at the time seemed to serve only Frankfurt and London Gatwick (interestingly via Larnaca) beyond Africa, aside a somewhat curious Harare-Perth-Sydney service, with a UM flight number but operated by a B747. As there is no other source which records this venture, it suggests that Air Zim was wishfully assigning a codeshare as its own metal.

A decade later, the airline's schedule would pivot away from Antipodean and Anglophone areas and orient itself along the Africa-Asia-China axis  (as seen yesterday) which has been a major story of the 21st century.

This item is borrowed from the incredible blog airline-memorabilia.blogspot.com which uncovered this 15-year old gem. The Timetablist is indebted to the Airline Memorabilia Blog for its continued support and the privilege of reposting these timetable pages. 

TAP Air Portugal Network, 1974

The last from this month's series from the remarkable Flight International Magazine archives available at flight global.com comes this magazine-made map of TAP Air Portugal's four-continent network on the eve of independence for the Lusophone colonies of Africa. Maputo is still Lourenço Marques, and for that matter Salisbury is not yet Harare. Interestingly, the caption of the map mention's prospects of 'improved relations with black Africa' in hopes of ending the "bulge" route which avoids banned West African airspace--similar to the constrictions that Apartheid-era South African Airways endured.

Interestingly, the mid-70s TAP is thin on its routes to Brazil, merely two destinations, with no service to Sao Paulo, Natal, Belem, or Brasilia. Recife is misspelled-- merely the most glaring cartographic fault, which lazily plots northeastern US cities far inland and European capitals at random.

Luanda appears as a major scissor station, linking the homeland with five southern African cities, as well as a boomerang connection to the tiny São Tomé e Príncipe archipelago. A handful of North Atlantic routes stretch from Lisbon and the Açores to New York, Montreal, and Boston, where large communities from Portugal, Cape Verde, and the Azores reside. Direct service to the US East Coast is offered from both Ponta Delgada (here referred to as Miguel--on the island of São Miguel) and Terceira, as SATA International still does today.

Today, TAP has more routes to Brazil, and maintains its colonial connections (but not its web of services) in Africa, but has all but abandoned the trans-Atlantic trade.

The following post will detail TAP's European services shown above.