Nigeria Airways, May 1979, 2 of 2: Detail of Domestic Network

A detail of the previous post, shown the domestic network of Nigeria Airways in May 1979; a barbell system with poles at Lagos in the south and Kano in the north. 

Chanchangi Route Map, c.2010

This item from the dusty archives of The Timetablist's dusty archives is an undated relic of the low-graphic era of a decade ago, when Chanchangi Air Lines was a means of travel within Nigeria. The 8-bit emblem of the airline and the card-deck zoom-in of the map of Nigeria further limit the sophistication of the visual message. 

Unlike the previous post, Yola was not served, but Port Harcourt and Kaduna apparently were, including an especially short hop between Abuja and Kaduna. 

Med-View Airline: Lagos to Jeddah, November 2017

An enticing picture of the corniche of Jeddah glows from Med-View Airline's social media accounts a year on from the previous post. However, Med-View does not serve Jeddah directly from Lagos; instead the connection is Kaduna—Kano—Jeddah, resurrecting Kano's former role as the northern international gateway for all of Nigeria. 

Supplementally confusing is the city list at the bottom; while the destinations listed there are among those Med-View serves, several of them (Enugu, Ilorin, Owerri, and Port Harcourt) including many of the more ambitious (Baltimore, Houston, Johannesburg, Lisbon) are not served by the airline, and no plans have been announced. This, too, is reminiscent of earlier episodes in Nigeria's airline history. 

IRS Airlines Advertisement, c.2007

If Arik Air doesn't offer the right route or a convenient schedule, the Nigerian air traveler's next option, at least a decade ago, might have been the reassuringly named IRS Airlines, which is even more non-Nigerian and strangely American in its livery, with a red-white-and-yellow emblem in the shape of an eagle's head, like a rejected US Postal Service logo, as seen on this magazine advertisement from about ten years ago, which marks the premier of this airline on The Timetablist.

What is not so reassuring is that the airline's Facebook Page has not been updated since 2011, and the airline's website isn't loading. Who knows where the initials came from, but at one point this curious carrier linked much of northern Nigeria, including Kano, Kaduna, Maiduguri, Sokoto, and Yola with Abuja and Lagos as well as southern cities like Benin, Port Harcourt and Owerri.

Arik Air: the domestic destinations, c.2013

A detail from the previous post, showing Arik Air's domestic destinations: twenty cities across Nigeria, from Calabar to Katsina, in addition to the two hubs of Abuja and Lagos. Presumably the network is nearly identical to what has been featured before on the Timetablist, but has never been presented in the lipstick lustre of this ticket office display banner.

Nigeria Airways: Domestic Network, November 1981

The most obvious difference in juxtaposing the route map of Nigeria Airways in 1981 with Arik Air in 2012 is the centralization around hubs that has taken place in those decades. Here, the state carrier offered a diversity of linkages between major cities, with an array of flights connecting Kano, Jos, Enugu, Benin City and Kaduna. Even Yola and Markurdi have multiple options (although as with all route networks, the frequency of such flights is not clear).

Aside from the intricacy of this web,  the complete absence of Abuja is obvious. Today, this myriad span of domestic flights has been rationalized around a two-hub system split between Lagos and Abuja. Although airlines worldwide have consolidated into hub-and-spoke systems, it is tempting to see this transition as an allegory for the fate of the federal state and Nigerian society in these ensuing years.

As noted previously, Kano's status as a northern hub and intercontinental gateway has been erased. Note that the Ibadan-Benin City-Calabar service was suspended at the time.

See the previous post for Nigeria Airways's international network from 1981.

Arik Air: Domestic flights, October 2012

Following on from the previous post, the small corner detail of Arik Air's two-page route map spread shows the domestic operations of the de-facto flag carrier. Here, the airline's signature red and blue colors are used to differentiate operations out of Lagos Murtala Muhammed from flights fanning out of Abuja's Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, which actually has connections to more cities than the much larger commercial capital, acting as a hub in the middle of the country.

Arik Air: The Domestic Network from Lagos, 2011

In addition to its strong base at the Federal Capital, Abuja, in the center of the country, Arik Air focuses heavily on the country's megacity, the erstwhile capital, Lagos, on the coast.

Routes here connect more to the oil-heavy Delta region in the southeast, than to the northern portion of the country. Not shown here, Arik flies regionally as far as Dakar and also links Lagos to Johannesburg, London, and New York.

Nigeria Airways: Detail of the Domestic and Regional Network, April 1966

Still Nigeria Airways, still all pink. The state airways corporation operated a zig-zaging domestic network, shown here as an inset of the previous post from April 1966.

Note how, in a wonderfully curious gesture, an arrow points northeast from Maiduguri, promoted as a gateway to the Middle and Far East. The North-Eastern State, gateway to Baghdad and Hong Kong. Today, Maiduguri has barely a handful of weekly domestic flights.

Kano, Nigeria's oldest airport, was the starting gate of the northern routes to Europe for both Nigeria Airways and other airlines, and at least today still has intercontinental attention from KLM.