Imperial Airways: The Empire Route, 1937

Continuing from yesterday's post, Imperial Airways's great Empire Route across south Asia and on to Australia features a number of small way stations which could hardly be found on a map today, much less having any import to commercial aviation. 

While Allahabad, in Uttar Pradesh, at least has an airport to this day, it is only served by a commuter connection from Delhi. Gwadar, the once-great Omani port of Baluchistan, is likewise a tiny regional airport today. In northwesternmost Burma, Akyab, known today as Sittwe, is similarly linked only to Yangon by regional airlines, although it has retained the original airport code AKY.

Somewhat bucking this trend is Koepang, in the pre-war era the next stop after Batavia (today Jakarta) and the largest city on Indonesian (west) Timor, which today hosts an active regional airport.

In Australia itself, tiny Normanton, Queensland, today has no air service and is best known for its historic, gold-rush era railway. Cloncurry, Queensland is likewise today a remote outpost without any air service. The third and final Queensland outpost before the coast, Charleville, retains an airport today, with Qantaslink service into Brisbane. 

Note that the map appears to keep some stations unlisted: it certainly appears that the trunk route makes a turn at Bangkok, but this is unlabeled, and there is an even more meandering line through Indochina up to Hong Kong, but no stops are shown here. 

SAS: The Worldwide Routes, 1960

In looking at the 21st century SAS, we can compare yesterday's subject to same airline at the height of its global reach. 

One the more regal route maps to ever grace the Timetablist, this magnificent, dynamic cartography exemplifies an earlier era the grandeur of the jet age is reflected in the eloquence of this graphic design. A so-called “spiral-polar projection,” which was “created especially for Scandinavian Airlines System to illustrate its worldwide routes,” are the only notations to the map. 

A quad-jet whisks its way into the high atmosphere, the might of its propulsion sweeps up the landmasses themselves, with far Siberia pulled away from the surface of the planet. The very latitudes of the global are twisted into the vortex of the jetliner's contrail. 

Upon the surface of these landmasses, thick red lines spread outward from Northern Europe to five continents. At the outer limits of the first generation jetliner's range, an impressive Oslo—Los Angeles was achieved, and lasted for decades, which as mentioned yesterday only came back in March 2016. Montreal and New York (the latter via Glasgow, it seems) were the only other North American destinations.

South America was, somewhat incredibly, more thoroughly covered, with the system's Lisbon—Recife—Rio de Janeiro—Sao Paulo—Montevideo—Buenos Aires—Santiago service. Africa was also served with a classic east African spine, Rome—Athens—Cairo—Khartoum—Nairobi—Johannesburg. None of these South American or African cities are served today. 

In addition to a half-dozen Near Eastern cities, SAS operated a trans-Asian trunk route to rival those of other European aviation pioneers, with a scissors-base at Karachi linking to Calcutta—Rangoon—Bangkok, which split to either Jakarta or onward to Manila—Tokyo, which swung northward to Anchorage to return to Copenhagen, here transgressing the print's nautilus-shell projection of the globe. 

Image via the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.

BOAC: The Speedbird Routes Across the World, c.1950

The might of the empire spans the newsprint continents in this vintage route map of BOAC. Trunks routes out of London connect five continents, with a major trunk route crossing the Mediterranean at Malta, heading east to Cairo, Basra, Bahrain and Karachi, where the routes splits north along a Delhi-Calcutta-Rangoon-Bangkok axis, turning northeast to terminate at Hong Kong, while a second route reaches far southeast to Singapore, stopping intermittently at Surabaya, somewhat surprisingly, then into Antipodea at Darwin, finally reaching Sydney, where Tasman Empire Airways connects to Auckland. 

The next post will detail the African and North Atlantic routes. 

Qantas Routes, c.1955

A map for Qantas from about the same era as the previous post, showing the predominant Australian carrier with all its five-continent reach, from Victoria to Vancouver, Johannesburg to Japan. Similar to this post from last year, also showing the pre-jet era Qantas, yet in this map the airline had spanned the Pacific to San Francisco, a route which commenced in 1954, just five year before the arrival of its first B707s.

SAS: Destinations from Kuala Lumpur, c.1960

Scandinavian Airline System offered Boeing jet services from Bangkok, with Polar Routes from Tokyo to Europe and from Europe to Los Angeles; SAS's worldwide network was reached with 4-times weekly connections from Kuala Lumpur on Thai Airways DC-6B cooperative services, which also linked regional cities from Djakarta to Phnom Penh.

Cathay Pacific Airways: Destinations from Kuala Lumpur, c. 1960

A much smaller carrier half a century ago, the green-stripped constellations of Cathay Pacific Airways spanned from India to Japan. It would be twenty years before the airline would acquire its first 747 and a quarter-century before the airline would cross the Pacific. Jesselton is now known as Kota Kinabalu.

KLM: Destinations from Kuala Lumpur, c. 1960

KLM Royal Dutch Air Lines fleet of shiny DC-8 jetliners whisked travelers from Kuala Lumpur east to Manila, north to Beirut and Athens, west to Houston and Mexico City.

BOAC: Worldwide Routes, 1962

Showing some unusual destinations, such as Brazzaville, Kano, Dakar and Windhoek that are no longer served by successor British Airways.

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.