Istanbul Atatürk Departure Board, Late March 2017

The mid-day departure board at Istanbul's Atatürk Airport on one of the last days of March, 2017. The home base of Turkish Airlines before its move to the new airport last year, the monitor is dominated by the airline, which serves more cities than any other airline in the world—and thus connected Atatürk to some unusual destinations, such as the North African cities of Algiers and Constantine, Algeria and Misrata, (here shown with the alternative spelling "Misurata") in Libya. Turkish also has grown an impressive presence elsewhere in Africa: Libreville, Lagos, and Accra are all shown on the schedule.

As has been discussed in the previous posts from this month, there is a plethora of flights to eastern Europe and Russia, both by Turkish and by other airlines—here we see Minsk and Tblisi, but also Lvov at 15:00, which was operated by AtlasGlobal's subsidiary, Atlasjet Ukraine before the whole operation went bust as detailed in the previous post. Just after it in the same time slot, Air Moldova departs for the capital, Chisinau. Other airlines on the board include Egyptair to Cairo and Royal Jordanian to Amman, as well as Qatar Airways to Doha. Singapore Airlines' flight at 1:30pm to Singapore has been cancelled.

Tunisair: Two New Destinations: Conakry and Constantine, March 2017

Tunisair has been expanding at a healthy clip, trying to transform from a tiny state carrier to a more international network. This involves both the inauguration of a long-haul operation (long planned since before the 2011 revolution and resurrected thereafter) and the spread of services in its own corner of the world. In the model of nearby Royal Air Maroc, Tunisair has been adding destinations in Western and Northern Africa.

Here are the two most recent increases: a twice weekly operation to Conakry, Guinea, in the far corner of tropical west Africa, and a thrice-weekly connection to Constantine, that ancient crossroads, now a secondary city in neighboring Algeria. 

Air France: The African Routes, 1977.

In the wake of Air Afrique Week, it might be most fitting to spend the latter half of the month examining a bit more of those carriers who served West Africa during Air Afrique's existence and in the aftermath of its sad demise.

The first such example is one of the newest additions to the Timetablist collection, an Air France route map from 1977, when Air Afrique was in its prime, and Air France was just beginning to adopt its modern color scheme. Surprisingly, Air France completely defers to the West African carrier in the Gulf of Guinea region, only touching Dakar on the route to Rio de Janeiro. While the former dominions of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia in North Africa are thoroughly serviced, France's colonial heartland is left untouched.

The service table at the bottom details Air France's weekly frequencies to North and East Africa and the Indian Ocean islands, and helpfully charts the use of particular aircraft, even if its not entirely clear which Paris airport hosts which flight. The footnotes confirm that Air France relies on Air Afrique, Cameroon Airlines, and UTA for services from Paris to West and Central Africa, and that these airlines, along with Air Djibouti, Air Comores, and Air Madagascar operate intra-African and domestic networks.

The next post details the Eastern portion of the map.