Air Algérie: Montréal-Algiers, March 2017

It seems the management of flag carriers across North Africa have similar strategy forecasts: within months of Tunisair announcing their first-ever long-haul, trans-Atlantic service to Montreal, the state airline of Algeria, Air Algérie, followed suit, with an identical aircraft. Luckily, Montreal's enormous francophone immigrant communities hail not just from North Africa but across the French-speaking states of the continent, so there is likely plenty of demand. For a brief period of time earlier this year, the airline had also planned a non-stop between Oran and Montreal, but this was scrapped in favor of increased frequencies from Algiers only. 

Tunisair Network, Early 2017

Tiny Tunisair is growing. Now extending to four continents, with extensive connections to metropolitan France (Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Toulouse) as part of more than two-dozen European destinations, including third-level cities like Belgrade and Düsseldorf. 

The Western Africa network is not as extensive as other carriers, but Tunis is now connected to seven francophone sub-Saharan capitals, from Nouakchott to Niamey. Three routes to the Middle East are sustained: Beirut, Jeddah and Medina, which is misplaced on this otherwise straightforward graphic representation. Not every venture has met with success, as the airline's flights to Dubai were scrapped, as has been previously reported here. 

Pride of the carrier is the airline's most distant service: the year-old long-haul link to Montreal, Tunisair's first wide-body, trans-Atlantic operation. 

Tunisair network, 2014

An unfortunately-terrible iPhone 4 photo, taken at the beginning of a Friday at the airport in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, shows the large window-sized map at the Tunisair ticket office.

The airline's entire network is shown, but extra care has been taken to pinpoint the Burkinabe capital, one of Tunisair's newest destinations. All flights are shown directly from Tunis, although TU395 actually operates as a twice-weekly Tunis-Ouagadougou-Bamako service, using one of Tunisair's A320s. The map displays these Sahelian cities alongside the airline's expanding West African network: Abidjan, Dakar and Nouakchott. Closer to home, Casablanca, Oran, Algiers, Tripoli, and Cairo are connected along the north African coast, and Beirut, Jeddah, Riyadh, and Kuwait being the other destinations in the Arab world.

Tunisair serves a particularly dense network in Europe, from Belgrade to Bordeaux to Brussels to Barcelona.

Air Algérie: The African Destinations, August 2011

Fast-growing, gas-fueled Algeria's spreads it influence in West Africa with flights across the Francophone Sahelian and Sub-saharan region run its state airline, Air Algérie. The destinations, if not the routings, are shown here in a shot from the airline's sleek website.

Note the spelling of Bamako ("Bamaco"), as well as the blue-dot in the middle of the desert, Tamanrasset. Despite being the country's great trans-Saharan way station, Tamanrasset's airport does not seem to have any southbound scheduled services, although more than one airline links it to Paris-Orly.

Air France: The African Routes, 1977.

In the wake of Air Afrique Week, it might be most fitting to spend the latter half of the month examining a bit more of those carriers who served West Africa during Air Afrique's existence and in the aftermath of its sad demise.

The first such example is one of the newest additions to the Timetablist collection, an Air France route map from 1977, when Air Afrique was in its prime, and Air France was just beginning to adopt its modern color scheme. Surprisingly, Air France completely defers to the West African carrier in the Gulf of Guinea region, only touching Dakar on the route to Rio de Janeiro. While the former dominions of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia in North Africa are thoroughly serviced, France's colonial heartland is left untouched.

The service table at the bottom details Air France's weekly frequencies to North and East Africa and the Indian Ocean islands, and helpfully charts the use of particular aircraft, even if its not entirely clear which Paris airport hosts which flight. The footnotes confirm that Air France relies on Air Afrique, Cameroon Airlines, and UTA for services from Paris to West and Central Africa, and that these airlines, along with Air Djibouti, Air Comores, and Air Madagascar operate intra-African and domestic networks.

The next post details the Eastern portion of the map.