Malaysia Airline System: Worldwide Network, 1982

One of many gems from the incredible collection of Flickr user caribb, who was not only thoughtful enough to photograph a few treasures from his extensive airline timetable collection, but generous enough to list them on Flickr under a creative commons license, allowing them to be exhibited here.

This gorgeous bichrome timetable insert shows the full extent of the malaysian airline system, MAS, just as it began to spread across three continents to connect European cities via the Middle East with a domestic and regional base, an East Asian arc, and an Antipodean network. As the map helpfully demonstrates, it was possible to stretch across the extent of the system, from Europe through the Gulf, via KL and to southeastern Australia, all aboard Jumbo Boeing Jets.

Timetablist will be dedicating an intermediate period going forward to highlight some of the incredible finds of caribb's collection. Timetablist would like to thank Doug from Montreal for allowing the reuse of these images under creative commons.

Air India, worldwide network, c.1960

Via either Comet or Boeing 707 to five continents, from the Statue of Liberty to the wildlife of East Africa, the beefeaters of Buckingham to the geishas of the Ginza. Note the dense intra-European network.

JAT Worldwide, 1970-85

JAT has always been a Timetablist favorite, if only for its dedicated attempt to access the Yugoslavian-American diaspora of the upper Midwest, where it was for a time the most exotic weekly visitor to Detroit and Cleveland Hopkins, and adding to Balkan flavor of Chicago O'Hare.

Here we find a bright blue map set, from sometime in the early 1980s or perhaps earlier, prior to its broadening of Great Lakes destinations. Its overall reach is quite impressive, a global arch with Beograd as its keystone, which turns at Shannon to stretch to Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto and New York.

Looking east, the red line bends across Europe to play the role of what has to be one of the more perculiar Kangaroo carriers, with an axis spanning Ankara- Tehran- Karachi -Bombay-Madras-Singapore and terminating at that great Yugoslav enclave of Sydney.

Malaysia-Singapore Airlines Worldwide, c. 1970

Two snapshots of Malaysia Singapore Airline's worldwide network as it stood circa 1970. Its flagship route was undoubtedly the Singapore-Bombay-Bahrain-Rome-London service. MSA split with the dissolution of the Federation of Malaya; it became MAS (Malaysia Airline System, now the global mega-carrier Malaysia Airlines) and Singapore generated its now legendary Singapore Airlines.