Istanbul Atatürk Airport Departure Board, December 2017

Continuing from the previous post, some nine months and 12 hours later, the same departure monitor screens inside the Turkish Airlines lounge at Istanbul Atatürk Airport, showing the bank of midnight flights across the globe, with nearly as much activity as in midday. As at all hours, home town flag carrier Turkish dominates the schedule, again challenging even the geographically astute by linking to such unusual and far-flung destinations as Antananarivo, Kabul, Ufa and Seychelles. Turkey's other airlines make an appearance, with Onurair flying to Nalchek in the Russian Caucuses at twenty past 12AM, and the now-defunct AtlasGlobal with a delayed take-off to Baghdad.  

There are several regional rarities that make an appearance, including Turkmenistan Airlines to Ashgabat (here spelt Ashgabad) as was featured on the Timetablist last month. The rather sketchy SCAT Airlines takes off for the uranium town of Aktau on the Caspian Coast of Westernmost Kazakhstan at ten til 2AM. 

The destination most frequently listed in this time block is Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport, listed 5 separate times, not only via Turkish at 11:45 but also Iranian carriers Aseman Airlines ("EP"), ATA Airlines (noted with the code "TBZ" as the very first entry) and Zagros Airlines at 2AM (also referred to with its longer ICAO code "IZG"). Since this time, according to the usually-reliable tables at Wikipedia, both ATA and Zagros no longer fly this route, nor indeed maintain a base at IKA altogether, shifting to solely domestic operations at Tehran's older secondary airport, Mehrabad International. 

One last mystery on the board are the two Egyptair flights MS9306 to Baku at 1:35 and MS9360 at 1:40 to Tokyo-Narita. They're frequent enough to be logged but what are these? Charter flights? 

AtlasGlobal Destinations, January 2018

A somewhat strange, translucent adverting stand placed in the lower level of the (now closed) Istanbul Ataturk Airport—one of those disappointing, low-ceilinged basements waiting rooms where travelers await the chaotic stampede of board-by-bus to the remote stand. 

As unappealing as the room is, it is not very much improved by plexiglass box obstructing the flow of passengers to the gate. But at least it is adorned with interesting stickers: Bishkek, Lviv, Kharkov, Makhachala, Nizhnekamsk, Tbilisi, Zaporizhia—even an astute geography buff could be stumped. Turkish low-cost, leisure airline AtlasGlobal specialized in regional flights across the Black Sea and Caspian region.

This, it seems, would be the high-point of AtlasGlobal, which always sounded a bit more like an industrial conglomerate than an air carrier. The airline faltered in the year following this photo, temporarily halting all flights, only to attempt a limited relaunch in early 2020 which only lasted until February of this year.

Uzbekistan Airways: The International Network, c.2003-2008

In sharp contrast to the photo-generated graphics of the domestic routes, this iteration of Uzbekistan Airway's international network is a sharp, simple white-on-blue. Found on this antique Central Asian tourism website, it dates most likely to the middle of the last decade.

The broad reach of Uzbekistan Airways features fantastic array of destinations of four continents, most especially the flagship Tashkent-Riga-New York route: this pride-of-the-network HY101 survives to this day. There are a great many Russian destinations, and service to many of the Central Asian capitals: Almaty, Astana, Bishkek, Ashgabad, and Baku. One might put the flight to Urumqi, capital of Chinese Turkestan, in this same category. Seven other European airports are included, including Athens and Istanbul. More randomly are flights to Seoul, Osaka, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. Delhi is only less surprising than Lahore and Amritsar, while Jeddah, Dubai, Sharjah and Tel-Aviv round out the Middle East.

Looking at the roster from Wikipedia, a great many of these more random cities survive within the network today.

BMI: Worldwide, Spring 2006

Speaking of Carriers other than BA, here a route map more contemporary to our Google-earth era: BMI's global reach in early 2006. The Washington-Dulles route had already failed, but the Chicago route was still alive, as was the reach to Las Vegas. Also the Caribbean routes, and in the eastern Hemisphere, the Mumbai run. None of these are currently active. BMI is currently serving a few dozen cities in Africa, such as Freetown and Addis Ababa, and the Near East, everything from Baku, Beirut and Bishkek to Saudi Arabia. But no transatlantic routes.

British Airways, Africa and Southwest Asia, Autumn 1999

Like every other carrier, British Airways has scrapped a handful of its African routes in the last decade. Here Abidjan, Durban, Harare, Lilongwe, and Windhoek are seen, which have since been dropped from the BA network. One destination missing from the map is Abuja.
Note also the Central Asian cities, Bishkek, Almaty, and Tashkent, and the curious location of Ashhgabat, incorrectly shown here south of Tehran. None of these routes lasted to the present. The Caucasian cities, Baku, Tblisi and Yerevan, are also no longer served; the post-Soviet exuberance was not enough to support British Airways's expansion into the CIS.

Aeroflot Worldwide 2005-6

This, when juxtaposed with yesterday's posts, shows the incredible erosion of Aeroflot's once-vast global network. Only Luanda remains among its formerly plentiful African stations. South America has no service, and gone are Mexico City, Seattle, San Francisco, and Miami.

Elsewhere, the airline's reach is equally deteriorated: yesterday's Singapore, Shenyang, Harbin, Karachi, Calcutta, Kuala Lumpur and Colombo and the Kazakh capital are gone.

The next post will show what's left of Aeroflot's European operations.

Aeroflot Worldwide Destinations, 1999: East

The Asia-Pacific destinations of Aeroflot in 1999, which were a great array, from Shenyang and Seoul to Singapore to Sharjah. Note that Bombay is Mumbai but Calcutta's name has not changed. The great many Siberian cities are not listed here, and the lack of route lines on the map leave the viewer to guess which of these many Russian cities had international services.