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. 

Oman Air Route Network, December 2015: The Eastward Routes

Continuing from the previous post, Oman Air has followed the general strategy of all other Gulf carriers, by provided an extensive medium and long-haul network across South and Southeast Asia, best understood as serving the constant flow of labor migrants from the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan into its home market and across the Gulf region.

Oman Air has yet to take on the business hubs of East Asia, although since this map was published in December 2015, the carrier has launched flights to Guangzhou, just last month.

Qatar Airways Route Network, November 2016: Australasia

We end our examination of the global network of Qatar Airways back where we started: its Australian services, with non-stop flights to four Aussie cities. Perhaps more worthy of note is the recent development of the incredible, 18-hour Doha—Auckland non-stop, which, however briefly, would be the world's longest non-stop flight, if and when its launch is no longer under delay. Currently, Emirates Dubai—Auckland holds the title. 

Etihad Route Map, September 2016: East Asia & Australia

Continuing on from the previous post, the right-hand side of Etihad's route map shows its presence in East Asia and the key Australian routes, including Melbourne and Sydney, two of the airline's five A380 destinations. Beijing—Nagoya is a rare non-direct-to-Abu Dhabi connection for Etihad, which even has fifth-freedom rights within the route. Likewise, Chengdu is a rather daring entry into central China in what is otherwise a strategy strictly limited to primary cities—perhaps the airline was stung by the failure of its Chonqing service—one of only a handful cities that Etihad has retreated from. Qatar Airways has followed Etihad, launching flights to Chengdu in 2013. 

Emirates Route Map, August 2016: The Global Routes

Since last year, Emirates undertook a redesign of their increasingly-complex route map. This stunning, dynamic work of pseudo-Dymaxion cartography is the result.

Over the next week, each page and inset of the route map will be posted in detail. This is page one, showing the red superhighways of superjumbos bolting out of Dubai like a network of refinery pipelines (fitting for a Gulf carrier). Africa, East Asia and Australasia are shown fully; South Asia and the Middle East are blank. Likewise, Europe is left mostly empty, except as it indicates the trans-Atlantic routes, which are shown passing polarwise for North America and in a trans-equatorial conduit across central Africa.

This map best represents the far Asian routes from Beijing to Bangkok and, as was discussed in the last post, the megadarrier's predominance in the Southeast Asia—Australia market and the trans-Tasman airspace, the interconnections between Bangkok and Singapore and the major Australian cities, and onward to Auckland.

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.

Thai Airways Route Table, G-M, November 2016

Continuing from the previous post, the full route schedule of Thai Airways is, somewhat remarkably, tables the entire route network of the airline in the back of its in-flight magazine. Here are tagged destinations G through M from Bangkok. Almost all are in Asia, except for London, Melbourne and Moscow. 

Thai Airways: The eastward route network, 2013

The right-hand side of the route network of Thai Airways International, another page from a 2013 edition of the flag carrier's Sawasdee inflight magazine, continuing from the previous post. Most connections from Bangkok, are unsurprising, with a number of cross-connections at Hong Kong and Seoul, although perhaps more interesting are the routes to Kunming and Chengdu in interior China. The inset shows domestic routes and the now-scrapped service to Los Angeles.

Garuda Indonesia: The International Routes, 2016

Staying in Southeast Asia as we finish up the month, it recently came to the attention of the Timetablist editorial committee that Garuda Indonesia has never been featured here before. A remarkable oversight which is today corrected with the airline's present route map.

Although the Timetablist strives to exhibit only the finest and more informative examples of airline cartography from the present and the past, all that we have available today is this extraordinarily complicated route map  from the airline's website.

While we applaud an airline which still undertakes to provide an old-fashioned route map on a website in this day and age, and we note that the batik-print of the continental landmasses here is a nice touch, the over-representation of codeshare routes muddles the instructional value of this map.

Perhaps the excess is an attempt to match the flag carrier's former glory. Having once had a wider reach and grander ambitions, Garuda endured an ignominious period as an international aviation pariah, black-listed from European Union airports from 2007 until 2009, and forced to retreat from some of its flagship routes, particularly the prestigious Los Angeles service and the Jakarta—Amsterdam trunk route to its colonial metropole along with every other inch of European airspace.

As with so many flag carriers, the contemporary iteration of Garuda is a simpler, more streamlined version, serving far fewer cities, both it is immediate region and farther afield. The triumph of the airline's renaissance has been its return to Amsterdam Schiphol, and, more recently, the reintroduction of service to London Heathrow in March of this year. Of late, management has publicly affirmed its commitment to reconnect to LAX by next year.  

That the Garuda of today only serves two European cities is nearly impossible to decipher from this route map, which shows more cities in Europe, 21, than foreign destinations that Garuda actually operates anywhere.

In truth, Garuda flies to Jeddah and Medina, (as much for the labor migration of its citizens as for holy pilgramages) and otherwise just a bare handful of east Asian megacities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Hong Kong. Flights out of both Jakarta and Denpasar airport on Bali to the major Australian cities of Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney cater to both tourism and business.

That's it. That is the extent of Garuda Indonesia at present. The dozens of other cities on this map are superfluous, showing codeshares and even freighter routes. In this day and age, most travelers are at least vaguely aware that an international airline cooperates with other carriers to ferry passengers beyond it own network; it is therefore completely unhelpful to show Cairo, Nairobi, Barcelona and Bahrain here. An airline's route map would best be limited to the airline's own routes, to demonstrate the actual extent of an airline's operation.

As it is, strangely random information, such as showing both “Moscow” as well as “Sheremetyevo” obscure more interesting operations such as Garuda's Jakarta—Singapore—Amsterdam—Jakarta routing and its non-stop from Medan to Jeddah. As it is, the map gives a sense that Garuda is attempting to display the wide breadth of its former glory of decades past, to the detriment of a more informative graphic.

Royal Brunei Network, c.2013

Continuing from the last post, here is another Royal Brunei route map, from some time before the flag carrier's logo changed, de-emphasizing the open-palmed crest of the Sultanate in favor of the current, boring monogram. It's often fun when pictograms stand in for cities; those here by and large stay within the pedestrian and predictable—a beefeater for London, the Merlion of Singapore, the Petronas Towers for Kuala Lumpur, a camel ride for Dubai, the Oriental Pearl TV tower for Shanghai, the skyline of Central for Hong Kong, oranutangs for Kota Kinabalu—although probably less know is the symbol Surabaya, the statue depicting the legend of the shark fighting the crocodile. Also, its unclear how Melbourne is particularly associated with a hot air balloon. 

Royal Brunei Airlines Routes, 2016

The Timetablist has featured Royal Brunei before—compare the above map, currently printed in this month's inflight magazine, with the 2011 version posted previously. This small airline of one of only two sovereign sultanates in all the world. The carrier has traditionally connected the tiny southeast Asian statelet, the only country whose territorial extent exists entirely on the island of Borneo, with the rest of east Asia, and has also long operated a route to London Heathrow via Dubai, which is today operated with the sleek B787. The non-stop flight to Jeddah is a somewhat more recent development. As recently as that last post, multiple cities in Australia were served, now the sole route is Melbourne. The inset shows some codeshare partnerships with Garuda, Thai, MAS and Turkish, although other than Istanbul, RB already flies to each destination shown. 

Lufthansa: The Worldwide Network, mid-1973

 

A recent post referenced the famous Lufthansa Spinnernetz Streckenatlas, which brought to our editorial attention that we had overlooked posting one of the more legendary graphics of Timetable History. Here is the 1973 version, courtesy of the perennially superb collection of Flickr user Caribb. 

As its base, the map is a unique, polar-focused pseudo-Azimuthal projection, showing all continents but with the Pacific meridians hooking back away from the globe's infinite edge into the north pole. The network itself is given an even more liberal representation, made up of just ten enormous trunk routes, intersecting at the center of the map over Germany (but, interestingly, not specifically mentioning any Deutsche Stadt).

Foreign and overseas destinations are listed in neat columns as these thick ribbons pass near to them: Singapore and Jakarta are skirted, not passed over, on the way to Sydney (Lufthansa left Australia decades ago). A single line from Philadelphia to Quito hits Nassau, Kingston and Bogota, meeting up with some sort of Europe–Caracas route before reaching the Andean way stations. A small offshoot links to Mexican destinations, including Monterrey and Merida, which are also of course no longer served.  The transpolar route from Germany to Anchorage makes right angle with Germany—Bangkok; a semi-circle of Hong Kong—Osaka(Itami)—Tokyo(Haneda)—Anchorage makes the grapefruit quarter.

Other images from caribb's Flickr stream show a fleet of DC-8s and 707s in heavy rotation, assisted by the brand-new B747s in the fleet. The next post will detail the African and South American Cone destinations.

As it has so many times in the past, Timetablist would like to express its appreciation for Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal)'s incredible collection, and to say thanks  for allowing the reuse of these images under creative commons.

ČSA Czechoslovak Airlines: The IL-62 Services, c.1970

A final item for ČSA Czechoslovak Airlines in its Soviet era: a route map specifically for its flagship IL-62 quadjet, which roared its way from Moscow to Montreal; JFK to Jakarta. The precise date of the item is unknown but the carrier still operated its west African route, although here it is curiously shown as stopping in Rabat instead of Casablanca on its Prague—Algiers—Dakar—Freetown schedule. The trans-Asian service is by now familiar, stopping in Athens, then splitting between Tehran and Cairo—Kuwait before scissoring at Bombay to link Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Jakarta. 

The three transatlantic cities are shown as well, with Brussels and Amsterdam as way stations to North America. The superjet also whisked apparatchiks domestically, the only IL-62 service from Bratislava was back to Prague. 

ČSA Czechoslovak Airlines Route Map, c.1975

In the hundreds of Timetablist posts in almost seven years, there have been few works of such cartographic styling as original and dynamic as this Czechoslovak Airlines route map from some time in the mid-1970s. It's pinwheel arrangement and radial design partly recall the famous Lufthansa Streckenatlas from the 1970s, and its disregard for distance recalls a contemporary Thai Airways route map. As this magnificent bullseye covers the entire globe, it will be discussed through a series of posts.

Radiating out from Prague with dissipating intensity, a pattern of straight-line routes connect four continents. Cities are arranged roughly by cardinal direction, but great liberties are taken with specific location. The innermost, darkest ring covers central Europe, while a robins-egg disc demarcates the edges of Eurasia, from London to Larnaca. The faintest, outer orb, bulging at the middle in an almost hyper-elliptical projection, is even less rigidly adherent to true geography, with Dubai, Jakarta and Montreal equidistant. 

What is perhaps most fascinating in terms of aviation history is the extraordinary extent of CSA's global reach, from Havana to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

There was a major waystation in Bombay,connecting directly from Prague and via Athens, Damascus, Larnaca and Beirut, with onward services to Jakarta, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Singapore. Kuwait and Abu Dhabi have a dedicated service from Prague, shown at sharp 3 o'clock. Note that the Cairo-Dubai operation is shown at 5 o'clock, for an extreme example of geometry over geolocation.

What is rather staggering to consider is that just one of these cities is served by Czech Airlines today.  CSA has no transatlantic routes, and flies no further than Dubai in Asia. While the late Iron-bloc regime in Prague may have had geopolitical agendas for such an expansive operation, it is still astonishing that a larger, wealthier home base can no longer support such a wide variety of long-haul services.

Lufthansa: Lost Destinations from the Summer of 2012

For space considerations, the other (non-Russian) worldly destinations that have lost their Lufthansa patronage since 2012 have been cordoned into this separate post. There are three continents hosting less Lufthansa than before, but the only mainline European city that is out is tiny Trondheim, Norway (a first for the Timetablist here), which was curiously served once a week by an aging B737-400.

Asia has been particularly affected: the long-haul connections to Jakarta (via Singapore) and Kuala Lumpur  (via Bangkok) could consistently work. More recently, Lufthansa has lost out to the Gulf three, and curtailed its dedicated flight to Abu Dhabi, and truncated the Muscat extension of its Frankfurt-Riyadh flights (although LX243, the Zürich-Dubai-Muscat connection on SWISS listed here, still operates today).

More dire but less surprising are the loss of further African services: no news that Tripoli has been abandoned, and Pointe-Noire's petrol-club PrivatAir B737-800 service via Libreville had its run, but less happy the abandonment of once-promising Asmara and long-served Khartoum, surely and sadly uneconomic nowadays.  Also, lamentably, Caracas has likewise sunk into a less-viable abyss and receives fewer and fewer international airlines.  Lufthansa closed down its Venezuelan outpost in May this year. 

Gulf Air: Four Times Weekly to Athens, Relaunched June 2014

Quite unlike the contemporary six-continent dominance of its progeny, Bahrain-based Gulf Air's fortunes have long been on a slow but steady decline. Operations as far-flung as Houston and Hong Kong, Johannesburg and Jakarta, Manchester and Melbourne are all long gone, as the multi-state alliance was pulled apart. 

Today, there are no flights to North America, East Asia or Australia, and its once-comprehensive spread across Europe has been reduced to only London, Paris, Frankfurt, Istanbul and Moscow.

It was somewhat of a victorious move, therefore, to relaunch flights to a new Euro gateway, in this case, the somewhat-unlikely choice of Athens, which, despite the economic contraction that if anything exceeds in magnitude the retreat of Gulf Air itself, at least has the advantage of being within range of Gulf Air's narrow body fleet. 

Singapore Airlines Network, 1976

This high disco-era Singapore Airlines route map boldly fits the styles of the times, laid out on a blinding dance floor of jolting ribbons, the jagged bands of red and blue interrupted by thunderbolts of strobe.

Aside from this eye-watering background, the route map cartography itself is rather bland: the jet black masses of four continents are connected with an all-white network. While many lines fan out from Singapore itself, Bahrain is particularly important scissors hub, the airline's sole Gulf destination acting as the only way station to six European hubs: London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Zürich, Athens, and Rome. Oriented eastward, Bahrain hosted Singapore flights from Bombay, Bangkok, and Colombo.

In East Asia itself, it is surprising to note how local the schedules ran: just to get up to Seoul or Tokyo required at least two stops in Hong Kong and Taipei. Already, the airline was well-oriented toward the Kangaroo Routes, with a criss-cross of long flights to Perth, Melbourne, and Sydney—although at the very least this map shows that a London-Sydney itinerary would have to pass through two other airports, at minimum, which doesn't seem so fly.

This item is reposted from Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal)'s photo stream. A special thank you to Doug as always for allowing creative commons licensing of his fantastic collection. 

Singapore Airlines: The Asian connections, 2013

From a global business traveler magazine back cover, Singapore Airlines, Silk Air and Changi Airport partner to boast of the easy connections from Manila to Male, Denspasar to Delhi. While the routes fan upwards toward mainland and offshore China, they do not attempt to show Korea or Japan, but instead link a dozen cities each in India, Indonesia and Southeast Asia, many of which are in fact served by the little sister carrier, SilkAir.

Most notably dating the advert is the list of long-haul routes: San Francisco, Houston, Los Angeles and New York. While all four cities are served from Singapore, none are nonstop nowadays, as the ultra-long haul A340 flights were discontinued at the end of 2013. Today they are paired Houston-Moscow, Los Angeles-Tokyo, New York-Frankfurt, and San Francisco with both Seoul and Hong Kong.

Alitalia: The Intercontinental Network, 1973

Another historic relic from Airline Memorabilia, a newsprint amp arrayed with the bright-green lines of the great Italian flag carrier of 1973. Truly "Italy's World Airline."

Unlike today, Alitalia of forty years ago was a six-continent global behemoth, with service to seven North American cities, including those like Detroit and Philadelphia that it no longer serves. Even Washington, D.C. is no longer a destination, and service to Chicago is seasonal. A further seven Latin American cities are shown, of which Lima, Caracas, Montevideo and Santiago have since been curtailed.

Somewhat Amazingly, the airline flew a wide band of routes across southern Asia to deepest Antipodea, with a twisting array of Kangaroo routes reaching both Sydney and Melbourne via Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Singapore, and/or Bangkok, with onward service also to Hong Kong. Southeast Asia was itself reached via Karachi, Bombay, and Delhi. Exactly zero of these cities see the Italian airline today; the only Asian destination east of Iran is Tokyo.

What is perhaps even more noticeable, front-and-center of this polar projection, is the extensive African network, showering down from both Rome and Milan. A closer examination of these will be the subject of the next post.

Special Thanks as always to Airline Memorabilia for the use of the image. 

Bouraq Network, c.1970

Despite the drab analog appearance, this monochrome type-written document, diagramming the network of Bouraq Airlines, is so evocative of its vintage. It could not have been created far from the Indonesian airline's founding in 1970, possibly punched out on a clanging Olivetti in a sweltering tropical office, shaded by shutters and stirred by ceiling fans. It somehow fits the airline's atmosphere, with its aged fleet emblazoned with vintage markings.

The document itself shows Bouraq's base at Balikpapan on Borneo, with links spanning across the Kalimantan provinces, eastward out to nearby Celebes, connecting to Ujung Pandang and beyond and at the bottom of the page reaching the huge cities of Java, Surabaya, Semarang, and Bandung, and as far away as the nation's capital, Jakarta.

Bouraq would remain the humongous archipelago's primary independent domestic airline until its demise in 2005.