SATA Air Açores Network, 2011.

Aside from SATA Internaçional's impressive charter and scheduled transocean services, shown in the previous post, which stretch from the Pacific to the Baltic, SATA's inter island services extend southward to Madeira, and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, and across each Azore, linking with the principal cities of Portugal proper: Lisbon, of course, but also Faro and Oporto.

SATA Internaçional Network, 2011

As mentioned in the two previous posts on TAP's 1974 network, the contemporary situation off the Straits of Gibraltar finds much of the service between the Azores archipelago and the rest of the world handled by SATA Air Açores/SATA Internaçional, whose two arms wrap impressively from San Francisco Bay to Stockholm. At the center of this world is a magnifying glass enlargement of the Azores themselves, as well as Madeira; exhaustive services between and within the islands themselves-- the center of the map will be detailed in the next post.

TAP Air Portugal Network, 1974: Detail of European Routes.

The taut routes of TAP Air Portugal's European and Atlantic network accentuate Lisbon's position betwixt the large cities of the northwestern continent and the warmer islands of the Portuguese realm in the Azores and Madeira. Much of these latter operations are now handled not by TAP but by SATA Air Açores, as well as numerous low-cost and charter carriers. Yet in the 1970s, the state carrier still undertook linking even tiny airports such as Porto Santo and Santa Maria with its mainline operations. Porto Santo and Las Palmas are no longer served today, although TAP has since expanded into eastern and southern Europe and maintains service to all of the continental cities shown here.

See the previous post for TAP's services to Africa and the Americas from the same item.

TAP Air Portugal Network, 1974

The last from this month's series from the remarkable Flight International Magazine archives available at flight global.com comes this magazine-made map of TAP Air Portugal's four-continent network on the eve of independence for the Lusophone colonies of Africa. Maputo is still Lourenço Marques, and for that matter Salisbury is not yet Harare. Interestingly, the caption of the map mention's prospects of 'improved relations with black Africa' in hopes of ending the "bulge" route which avoids banned West African airspace--similar to the constrictions that Apartheid-era South African Airways endured.

Interestingly, the mid-70s TAP is thin on its routes to Brazil, merely two destinations, with no service to Sao Paulo, Natal, Belem, or Brasilia. Recife is misspelled-- merely the most glaring cartographic fault, which lazily plots northeastern US cities far inland and European capitals at random.

Luanda appears as a major scissor station, linking the homeland with five southern African cities, as well as a boomerang connection to the tiny São Tomé e Príncipe archipelago. A handful of North Atlantic routes stretch from Lisbon and the Açores to New York, Montreal, and Boston, where large communities from Portugal, Cape Verde, and the Azores reside. Direct service to the US East Coast is offered from both Ponta Delgada (here referred to as Miguel--on the island of São Miguel) and Terceira, as SATA International still does today.

Today, TAP has more routes to Brazil, and maintains its colonial connections (but not its web of services) in Africa, but has all but abandoned the trans-Atlantic trade.

The following post will detail TAP's European services shown above.