Abidjan: Evening Arrivals, 19 March 2017

Like the departures monitor shown in the last post, the evening arrivals schedule at Abidjan some weeks back was dominated by hometown carrier Air Côte d'Ivoire, with flights landing from Bamako, Niamey, Dakar, and Conakry in quick succession, followed an hour later by a domestic arrival from San Pedro.

As the time approached 7PM, the longer-range and intercontinental flights from foreign carriers began crowding the modest apron at Houphouët-Boigny International Airport: South African Airways from Johannesburg via Accra (which also stops at Kotoka International Airport on the return leg), then Air France from Paris an hour later. It is this flight, AF702, that is occasionally operated by an A380 superjumbo—one of the few to anywhere in Africa, and currently the only double-decker service between to francophone cities.

At 8:30, Rwandair's flight 222 from Kigali via Libreville and Douala, immediately followed by the Brussels Airlines link to Cotonou. The last arrival on the evening's board is the Tunisair non-stop from Tunis. 

Qatar Airways Route Network, November 2016: The African Routes

Qatar Airways has not merely mimicked its rival Emirates in expanding across Africa, but has in several cases gone beyond the Dubai-based carrier to destinations which it now serves alone. These include more recent additions to the Qatar network, such as Kigali, Maputo (which has had a short and somewhat rocky history as a destination, served thrice-weekly with a Dreamliner), Marrakesh and Windhoek (added only back in October), but also more proximate East African destinations such as Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar (the latter served by flyDubai). The airline competes with Emirates on the major routes from Cape Town to Casablanca, but is not anywhere near as strong in West Africa, flying only to Lagos. 

Congo par Sabena, 1954

A domestic route map of sixty years ago looks much more impressive than the meagre network of Korongo today. Sabena offered services to no less than thirty airports in the vast Belgian colony, with what looks to be busy stations not only at the capital Leopoldville, and the principal regional administrative outposts at Elizabethville and Stanleyville, but throughout the interior of the enormous territory.

There were more than half a dozen routes via various way stations to the metropole in Brussels, including Tripoli, Casablanca, and Rome; all the routes from the capital connected at Kano, which must have been quite an operation in its own right.

In addition, regional African routes spanned the territorial border in all directions: from Leopoldville to Portuguese Luanda and Johannesburg, which also had a link to Elizabethville; from Albertville to Dar Es Salaam, from Libenge to Bangui, in French Equatorial Africa. Not especially the route to Entebbe and Nairobi, especially how Kigali lies within the realm of Belgian Central Africa at this time.

Sabena: The African Network, 1973

Continuing from the previous post, but focussing on Africa: Belgium has a particular, and outsized, colonial history in Africa, the 20th century era of which is intimately intertwined with the corporate history of Sabena. Here, near the height of the Belgian Airlines extent, the flag carrier flew to fifteen cities south of the Sahara. 

In west Africa, flights from Zaventem National Airport reached Dakar, Conakry, Abidjan, Niamey, Kano and Douala, with interlinking onward service to Monrovia and Lagos. Further into Central Africa lay Kinshasa, surely Sabena's most important African destination, linked from Niamey, Douala in Africa and Brussels and Athens in Europe. It is notable that no other Congolese city was served. 

Athens served as a supra-Mediterranean station for flights to East Africa: Nairobi and Entebbe connected non-stop from Greece, as did an ultra-long haul to Johannesburg. All three were also served non-stop from the home base. Interestingly, Uganda's main airport was also directly connected to Vienna. Kigali and Bujumbura, the capitals of Belgium's other central African former colonies, were only served from Nairobi, with Dar Es Salaam also linked in. 

Special thanks again to Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal) for allowing reuse under creative commons licensing. 

South African Airways: African International Network, 2013

As detailed in the previous post, the inflight magazine for South African Airways lists the airline's network across Africa, showing flights to Dar Es Salaam, Nairobi, Mauritius, Blantyre, Lilongwe, Entebbe, Maputo, Brazzaville, Pointe-Noire, Bujumbura, Kigali, and Libreville, exclusively with narrow-body A319 and B737-800 aircraft, except for the route to nearby Mauritius which uses the quad-engined wide body A340. Long-haul routes to four other continents, shown on the bottom half of the page, are detailed in the following post.

Kenya Airways: The Eastern and Southern Africa Routes, 2011.

A detail of the previous post showing the Kenya Airways network stretching across eastern and Southern Africa: non-stops to Gaborone and Johannesburg, and a inter-linked network of services to Lusaka, Lilongwe, Harare and Maputo, whereas Nampula in northern Mozambique is served non-stop. There are also direct flights to Lubumbashi and Ndola in the trans-national copperbelt, and flights stretching into the Indian Ocean to Antananarivo, Moroni and Victoria in the Seychelles. Zanzibar is connected to Mombasa, Bujumbura and Kigali are also linked. Flights northwards include Juba and in the Horn of Africa Addis Ababa and Djibouti.

Ethiopian Airlines: The East African Destinations, Spring 2013

Of the more than four dozen African cities that Ethiopian serves, it is particularly strong in its home region of East Africa.

South African Airways: the African Network, 2013

Troubled, loss-making state carrier South African Airways, whose past has been covered extensively on Timetablist, continues to dominate its home continent as one of the largest African carriers. As shown in this flyer circulated at Munich airport earlier this year, the airline still has success connecting passengers via its antipodean hub at Johannesburg OR Tambo, which remains Africa's busiest airport.

Beyond the southernmost cone, detailed in the next post, SAA serves sixteen cities in Western, Central and Eastern Africa, from Dakar to Dar Es Salaam, including smaller airports such as Brazzaville, Bujumbura, Cotonou and Pointe-Noire. However, the airline by-passes the Sahel and Sahara on its way to its new remaining European gateways.

Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta Airport International Departures, 30 April 2013, #2

The second screen of the international departures board for NBO on the night of 30 April shows activity through the night at this 24-hour airport; no restrictions on small-hour activity, perhaps because there is so little.

In the 35 minutes before midnight, Kenya Airways has two long-hauls: to Guangzhou via Bangkok, and London-Heathrow. There is a shorter flight to Bujumbura and Kigali.

SWISS leaves for Zürich, one of the last African services for the airline which formerly served a dozen sub-Saharan cities. After an almost two-and-a-half hour pause, Brussels Airlines leaves for Brussels via Kigali. Turkish Airlines takes a dead-zone departure time to fly to Istanbul, a curious time slot, and just before sunrise, Ethiopian operates the first of several daily flights to Addis Ababa.

By daylight, activity picks up. KQ leaves for Johannesburg, and follows in the next hour with departures to Dar Es Salaam, Juba, Yaounde, and a link to Lilongwe and Lusaka. Air Uganda's first flight to Entebbe leaves at the same time. African Express leaves for Berbera and Mogadishu at 7am.

Air Zaïre Network, 1981

Given this week's sleek but slender offerings from newly-minted Korongo, its incredible to look back a time when Congolese carriers had a much wider reach: the above poster shows the spread of Air Zaïre at its zenith, when it was "also celebrating 20 years" since its founding in 1961 as Air Congo.

The national carrier had an astonishing array of services, which are here represented by a powerful kinetic gesture reminiscent of an African antelope artwork. The European cities are connected by the arc of the animal's horn: Athens, Rome, Geneva, Frankfurt, Madrid, Amsterdam, London, Paris, and of course Brussels. 

The second horn aligns with the West African route, linking Kinshasa with Lagos, Libreville, Douala, Lomé, Abidjan, and Dakar. Lubumbashi is the only domestic destination included here but was hardly the only internal operation. 

East Africa on the animal's underside show Lusaka, its southernmost city (South Africa was shunned) but also Kigali, Bujumbura, Nairobi, Entebbe and Dar Es Salaam.

This calligraphic creature was used for a number of years, appearing on timetables and other advertisements. Air Zaïre's fortunes would sink with the rest of the continent's aviation companies, and indeed with country itself, which continues to be mired in conditions far less promising than a quarter century ago. 

Kenya Airways Destinations, 2011 (#2)

The vast reach of Kenya Airways, the 21st century Queen of Africa's skies, is reflected in this index of cities served from the back of a boarding pass from mid-2011. Major hubs such as Addis Ababa, Lagos and Johannesburg are mixed with smaller capitals such as Ouagadougou, Yaoundé, and Brazzaville, and rarer airports such as Moroni, referred to here as Comoros. Dubai, Mumbai, and other key connections in Asia and Europe are also included (The previous post labels the other destinations listed here).

East African Airways International Routes, c.1974

From an obscure but delightful website comes this under-decorated, tricolored rarity: the extent of East African Airways at the height of its operations, with more than twenty cities in three continents from the Nairobi-Dar Es Salaam-Entebbe triangle.

Associates' routes increase the destinations: Accra, Lagos, Kinshasa, Seychelles, and Cairo are shown, with farther routes spanning out to East Asia, or even Australia in the case of the trans-Indian line from Mauritius. The springboard from London surely lands in America and out of Copenhagen comes a longitudinal shot suggesting a trans-polar route.

The year is a total guess, but the graphic design gives an early-to-mid-70s hint, and surely these long European routes were run by VC-10s, which were not even ordered until 1969.

East African sadly ground to a halt in '77, to be replaced by national carriers, of which Kenya Airways is unquestionably the most successful successor. That carrier has a great many more African routes but not nearly the reach into Europe as shown here some 35 years ago.

Brussels Airport Arrival Channel, January 2012: Screen # 1

An early morning broadcast of the arrivals schedule for Brussels National Airport in January 2012, broadcast on the televisions in the guest rooms at the Sheraton Brussels Airport Hotel. Although the first flight in is a charter from Casablanca, the screen is dominated by Brussels Airlines's overnight arrivals from tropical Africa: the Cotonou-Ouagadougou SN264, Conakry-Banjul SN224, and Kigali-Entebbe SN465. Also an early flight from Domodedovo Airport in Moscow, and a United Airlines B777 service from Washington Dulles.

Brussels Airlines: Routes to Africa, November 2011

Similar to yesterday's post, this interactive map is from Austrian Airlines's website but shows its Star Alliance sister, Brussels Airlines, and its routes to Africa.

The route lines themselves are delightfully stylized into bouquet-like bunches, but do not reflect actual flight patterns from Brussels, which often triangulate between two African cities and Belgium, such as Abidjan and Monrovia.

Other cities which are marked but not named indicate the destinations of yet other Star Alliance Partners, as well as Brussels Airlines itself-- no less than its premiere African destination, Kinshasa, is not labeled here, perhaps suggesting that Austrian does not codeshare on the route. BMI, which reaches Freetown in West Africa and Addis Ababa in the east, is also shown in the key at the far bottom left as a possible partner.

Note that Brussels is closing its Accra station one month from the date of this post--its rare that a route to Africa, especially booming Ghana, is not a success.

KLM: Tracking Flights over Africa and the Middle East, November 2011

A screen shot from the evening of 11 November 2011, from KLM's delightful flight tracking utility from the airline's website, revealing some of the Dutch airline's unique destinations in the region.

Icons of a handful of jets, all making their way south of the Sahara from Schiphol, are mostly nearing their destinations: Flight to Accra is still on the Algeria-Mali border, while the thrice-weekly Flight #KL577 to Kano is still over Niger. As has been mentioned in previous posts, KLM is the last European airline to serve the northern Nigerian metropolis. Nearby, the nightly Flight #KL587 into Lagos is brushing over the northeasternmost section of Benin before its initial descent.

On the other side of Africa, Flight #KL567/569/571, which may have stopped in Arusha/Kilimanjaro airport, is on final approach to Dar Es Salaam, while the Flight KLM#535/537 from Kigali is already heading north back to Entebbe, a route which at the time of this viewing had just passed its one-year anniversary. The two non stops from Amsterdam to South Africa, to #KL597 Cape Town and #KL591 to Johannesburg, are over Namibia and Zambia, respectively. Amsterdam is the only European city besides London which is connected to Cape Town.

At the upper left, a trio of Gulf-bound Flying Dutchmen cluster over Kuwait on their way to either Dammam, Doha, Dubai or Abu Dhabi, or perhaps even Muscat. Whereas a number of international airlines used to serve King Fahd International in Dammam, KLM is one of the few that remains.

Kenya Airways: The African Network, mid-2010

Kenya Airways' rapid expansion across its home continent is evident in the great breadth and depth of this route map, especially in comparison with the same article from just a year previous.

Kenya is still predominant across its home region, connecting neighboring East African cities, but with a large number of southbound routes, including a new link to Gaborone, Botswana.

Although not the focus of this and the following post, redlines reaching the page's edges show links to Europe and Asia. The three European destinations are suggested to be above the top of the page, although both Amsterdam and Paris are located on the visible portion of Europe.

The next post details the route networks which stretch across the Central and Western portions of the continent.

Air Uganda Schedule, 2011

A snapshot of Air Uganda's online schedule from the summer of 2011, showing its weekly runs between Entebbe and Dar Es Salaam, Kigali, Juba and Nairobi. According to Wikipedia, Air Uganda also reaches Zanzibar and Mombasa, but these schedules are not online.

It is particularly informative to have the standard fares set right into the matrix, with Dar Es Salaam on special for only US$199.

Ethiopian Airlines: West & Central African Routes, 2011

Ethiopian Airlines' serves the vast majority of African capital cities, webbing out from Addis Ababa. Here, one of the airline's few weak spots on the continent, a lack of service between Dakar and Abidjan, is evident.

After announcing service from Accra to Monrovia and on to Conakry in late 2009, the outbreak of conflict in Guinea scrapped the extension, and a promising B757 service to Robertsfield was downgraded to a regional service from Spriggs-Payne Airport by Ethiopian's Lomé-based affiliate, ASKY Airlines.

With ASKY spreading rapidly throughout the West African region, it seems Ethiopian's strategy for the sector is limit mainline services from Addis Ababa into these smaller markets. Still, full-sized jet services operate into under-served cities such as N'Djamena, Bangui, and Malabo. Note the service from Khartoum to Juba, capital of the soon-to-be independent Southern Sudan.

Sabena: Service to Four Continents, c.1960

A still shot from this old Sabena advertisement, which briefly shows a map of the Belgian World Airlines reach at the time. Routes go to countries, designated by flag, not cities, and each destination gets a single direct line from Belgium, regardless of the true routing of the flights.

Certainly some of the cities can be accurately presumed (Abidjan, Mexico City, Bujumbura, Tehran, etc) while others (Lagos or Kano? Casablanca or Rabat? Oslo or Bergen? Perhaps both in such cases?) can only be guessed at.

The above is just single screen shot from a reel of Mid-Century promotional films, which are just incredible on so very many levels, and well-worth viewing for the plane spotting, the shots of JFK and Zaventem National Airports, and extinct mid-Century accents of the voice-overs alone:

East African Airways: Summer Timetable, 1974

Within the pages of this brochure, issued for midyear 1974, are two maps showing the extent of East African Airways networks. On the left, a landless, geometric schematic shows East African's services in its home region, with five routes each out of Entebbe and Nairobi to London, Athens, Frankfurt, and Zürich, with connections between them as well as onward service from Frankfurt and Rome to Copenhagen. Nairobi also had a small Asian circuit: Aden-Karachi-Bombay, whereas Dar Es Salaam's only trans-ocean operation was a Tananarive-Mauritius leg.

Cooperative services are shown to Lagos, Accra, Cairo, Tokyo and the Seychelles, with arrows pointing outwards from Blantyre, Mauritius, Seychelles, London and Copenhagen, presumably to other corners of the Globe.

This item has been borrowed from the terrific website Timetable Images, which graciously allows reposting of its collection under creative commons. Special Thanks to Björn Larsson.

The next post will detail the second panel of the map, showing East African Airway's "domestic" services.