Azerbaijan Airlines Destinations, Spring 2015

The curious case of the Azerbaijan Airlines route map, a semi-interactive presentation on the airline's slick web portal. Yellow-gold pegs portrude out from a slate-clay continent, showing destinations as expected as London, Frankfurt, Moscow, Paris, and Dubai and as interesting as Prague, Riga, Tel-Aviv, Tblisi and Minsk. To the north, a number of secondary Russian cities is served, but there's only a weak network southward: the map is equally intriguing for the cities not shown. Only New York and Beijing, new long-haul additions to the network, are not encompassed in this slice of globe.

Uzbekistan Airways: The International Network, c.2003-2008

In sharp contrast to the photo-generated graphics of the domestic routes, this iteration of Uzbekistan Airway's international network is a sharp, simple white-on-blue. Found on this antique Central Asian tourism website, it dates most likely to the middle of the last decade.

The broad reach of Uzbekistan Airways features fantastic array of destinations of four continents, most especially the flagship Tashkent-Riga-New York route: this pride-of-the-network HY101 survives to this day. There are a great many Russian destinations, and service to many of the Central Asian capitals: Almaty, Astana, Bishkek, Ashgabad, and Baku. One might put the flight to Urumqi, capital of Chinese Turkestan, in this same category. Seven other European airports are included, including Athens and Istanbul. More randomly are flights to Seoul, Osaka, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. Delhi is only less surprising than Lahore and Amritsar, while Jeddah, Dubai, Sharjah and Tel-Aviv round out the Middle East.

Looking at the roster from Wikipedia, a great many of these more random cities survive within the network today.

Estonian Air: Summer Timetable & Route Map, 2000

A miniature route-map and schedule for a miniature country and airline: The Summer timetable (Suvine lennuplaan) for Estonian Air in the year 2000. Like the country's flag and the airline's sharp color scheme, shown on a B737 on the cover, the printing is done in Baltic blue and black ink, and featuring what has to be one of the simplest and sharpest bird emblems in all of aviation.

The map shows only north central Europe, as the airline's limits extend only to London, Oslo, St. Petersburg and Kiev. This is made a bit more difficult as Moscow, Minsk and Frankfurt seem a bit out of place to fit the frame of the diminutive graphic. All routes are out of Tallinn, there are no domestic routes nor other Estonian gateways; this corner of the Baltic has extensive ferry (and even at one point helicopter) services, so there is no need to fly across the Helsinki.

Brussels Airport Departure Board #3

Mid-afternoon at Brussels Airport in early January 2012 shows a number of flights to nearby European cities. One interesting departure is FlyBE's flight to the Isle of Man via Southampton, followed a quarter of an hour later is airBaltic's flight to its Riga home base. Small flights on Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa, KLM, LOT, Swiss, and BMI take off thereafter. The only non-European destination after 1:00PM is Egyptair's non-stop MS726 to Cairo.

Amsterdam Schiphol: Arrivals Board at 15:30, July 2011

A busy evening at one of Europe's superhubs. The fifteen minutes from 6:30pm commences with two of KLM's non-stops from China, one from Sichuan's capital at Chengdu and one from coastal Xiamen. Over the next five minutes, a flock of flights arrives from the corners of Europe: Easyjet from Prague, Alitalia from Milan, and Lufthansa from Munich. A Transavia flight from Lisbon is followed by an airBaltic Riga arrival.

At 40 minutes past the hour, another of KLM's increasing services to East Asia, this a link to its SkyTeam Partner Korean Air's megahub at Incheon, lands concurrently with more regional, low-cost services from Spain and Britain: An Arkefly charter from Mahon, Easyjet from Gatwick and BMI Baby from Nottingham. At quarter til 7, two Air France/KLM code shares get in from Bergen and Berlin.

This brief quarter hour demonstrates the breadth and diversity of Schiphol's connections.

Aerolot: The European Destinations, 2005/06

Aeroflot remained much stronger on the European continent, with a number of Eastern European destinations that reflect Moscow's former stature. The map also shows a number of domestic destinations in European Russia.