Frankfurt Airport Departures, August 2012

Just twenty minutes of mid-weekday activity at Frankfurt Airport in late August 2012, showing departures (mostly of Lufthansa, naturally) as near as Salzburg and as far away as Kuala Lumpur on Malaysia Airlines and Charlotte on USAirways.

Malaysia Airlines: Cape Town-Buenos Aires, 2010-2011

Of all the routes that Malaysia Airlines has pulled down, such as its Newark-Dubai-Kuala Lumpur and later Newark-Stockholm-Kuala Lumpur B777 service-- and all the cities it has withdrawn from--its list of terminated destinations is long-- none is quite so unusual, and so unfortunate, as the recent end of its Kuala Lumpur-Cape Town-Buenos Aires service. Just a year ago, the airline was offering special fares, priced in rand, for the transatlantic leg of the journey. Now, the airline has completely withdrawn from the South American continent, and without any African destinations outside of Cairo.

Cape Town itself is now without a nonstop connection to South America, although southeast Asia can still be reached with Singapore Airlines's nonstop to Singapore (the inevitable competition of this service may have been a primary factor in Malaysia's withdrawal). Buenos Aires passengers must head eastward to Johannesburg and connect to South African Airways, which also serves Sao Paulo from OR Tambo. Alternatively, Cape Town travelers can reach Brazil via Luanda on TAAG Angolan Airlines, which bridges to both Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

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.

Malayan Airways c.1960

An attractive greyscale announcement of an adolescent Malayan Airways tiger lines, which at the time extended only as far as Hong Kong, direct with its jet-prop Bristol Britannia (and supercool frill typeface). Decades later Malaysia would crest as one the world's largest carriers, with services like KL-Dubai-Newark and KL-Johannesburg-Cape Town-Buenos Aires.

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.