VARIG: The Transatlantic Routes, c.1970

 

Remaining as Lusophone as our last post, here is a snippet of a folded, full-color map with the red routes of the storied Brazilian airline VARIG spanning across, sometime about half a century ago. In the analog era it was rather common for airlines to display their networks on commercially-available cartography rather than commissioning a custom graphic. 

This diagram demonstrates a now-bygone era when Rio de Janeiro's Galeão Airport was the country's primary intercontinental gateway, before it was eclipsed in the mid-1980s by São Paulo's new Guarulhos International.

What can be made out from this odd clipping are a web of long lines connecting Brazil to Europe, presumably several cities in Portugal besides just Lisbon, one of which apparent stops in Sal in the Cape Verde Islands (see previous post). 

A more unusual routing links the West African coast at Monrovia-Robertsfield, before continuing straight northward for what may be Lisbon or even Madrid. This way station existed for many years, the nadir of which was the tragic 1967 crash of VARIG Flight 837, a DC-8 on a Beirut-Rome-Monrovia-Recife-Rio routing. 

Once the links are received in Rio, a busy web of regional routes fans back out towards Buenos Aires, Porto Alegre, and Asunción. São Paulo seems a but a minor pit stop on the way to other places. A somewhat thinner red marking traces the vast Brazilian coast, linking Rio with Salvador, Recipe, Natal, and Belem, while an interior hop reaches the new capital, Brasilia. 

Iberia Network, c.1968

Reminiscent of the mid-century route map of KLM posted earlier this month, this fascinating and somewhat confusing postcard, showing Iberia's entire route system, is dated to 1968 but seems a relic of even earlier years, given its semi-medieval, hand-painted style, especially the Gothic lettering of "Mare Oceanum" set vertically on the spine of the Atlantic Ridge. It is featured for sale at this website.

The anachronism is further enhanced by the curious and highly confusing use of older names for the destinations: Nouadhibou is still shown as Port-Etienne, Dakhla in Western Sahara is referenced as Villa Cisneros, and Malabo, capital of Spain's only sub-Saharan colony, is listed as Santa Isabel, which connected to the metropole of Madrid and the large station at Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands, and which has local links to mainland Bata and to Douala, in Cameroon, which is spelled with a "V" as if carved in marble. 

The mysterious is "La Guera" which today can be found almost nowhere on any maps or airline schedules. Friends at Airline Memorabilia note that this was once an outpost in Spanish Sahara, now a ghost town. It is interesting to juxtapose this item with an Iberia route-map advertised twenty years later. 

The barbell-style route system is focused, naturally, on Madrid, with feeder routes to the capitals of Western Europe,  and which appears to have non-stops to Rio de Janeiro; the hub at Tenerife likewise has a non-stop to South America, reaching landfall at Montevideo; the network then extends across the southern cone to Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Santiago and upward to Lima, then Bogotá, then Caracas, where the route turns back to the Iberian peninsula or up to the Caribbean basin at San Juan.

Emirates Route Map, August 2016: The American Routes

Yesterday's post introduced the latest Emirates route map, with its gorgeously-tessalated, neo-Fullerian projection. Left off that first post was this second page, showing the Americas exclusively (and a large swath of the southeast Pacific, interestingly). 

Emirates increasing number of routes to North America are some of the longest commercial flights in the world, especially the ultra-long haul Dubai—San Francisco and Dubai—Los Angeles runs, whose twice daily A380 services are scheduled in at a staggering 16 hours 15 minutes, currently the world's sixth longest non-stop flight, followed by Dubai—Houston, which is ninth. Dubai—Dallas is 17th, and Dubai—Fort Lauderdale is 24th, and Dubai—Orlando is 28th. 

Even though it doesn't rank as highly, the Sao Paulo non-stops generally top 15 hours, the Buenos Aires link an even longer haul. Indeed, the shortest route on this map is the controversial fifth-freedom Milan—New York JFK service. 

While Emirates continues to add U.S. gateways (as was discussed in posts earlier this month), it is interesting to note that several large cities have yet to be reached, particularly Mexico City but also Vancouver and Montreal (which is served by Qatar and Turkish Airlines). Miami was recently bypassed for Ft. Lauderdale, a curious development in American intercontinental aviation which has been covered extensively earlier this month.

The map does include the Dubai—Panama route, which at 17.5 hours would soar in the rankings of ultra-long haul services. However, this launch has been delayed for almost a year and the exact start date has not been set, it is both drawn on the system and featured in the box at lower right, which also announces the start of flights to Bologna and Bamako—the table itself an index of the extraordinary breadth and growth of this behemoth airline. 

Emirates: The Worldwide Route Map, March 2015

Continuing to look at Emirates this week, here is the intricate pinwheel of Emirates routes radiating out of Dubai in March 2015, scooping clockwise to East Asia and the Americas, Africa and Southern Europe, and counter-clockwise to Australia and Northern Europe. 

Several routes stand out from the spinning pattern: the controversial Milan Malpensa—New York JFK superjumbo operation being one, and the connection between Larnaca and Malta cuts across several of the three dozen routes which make up the tremendously dense European services. 

The network is at its most complex in Australasia, with the mini-hub in Singapore connecting via Colombo with onward routes directly to Brisbane and Melbourne, which also has a non-stop from Kuala Lumpur, whereas Sydney has a direct connection to Bangkok, which is itself linked to Hong Kong. All three eastern Australian cities connect to Auckland; Emirates is now a dominant player in the trans-Tasman market, flooding the antipodean skies with double-decker A380s, and making an additional appearance at Christchurch. 

Elsewhere, a few distant pairs are linked up operationally: the Rio de Janeiro service continues on to Buenos Aires (whereas Sao Paulo gets a dedicated non-stop); Accra and Abidjan have long been linked together. Most notably, Dakar is shown as triangulating with Conakry, although this perennially delayed service relaunch was only underway in October.

SAS: The Worldwide Routes, 1960

In looking at the 21st century SAS, we can compare yesterday's subject to same airline at the height of its global reach. 

One the more regal route maps to ever grace the Timetablist, this magnificent, dynamic cartography exemplifies an earlier era the grandeur of the jet age is reflected in the eloquence of this graphic design. A so-called “spiral-polar projection,” which was “created especially for Scandinavian Airlines System to illustrate its worldwide routes,” are the only notations to the map. 

A quad-jet whisks its way into the high atmosphere, the might of its propulsion sweeps up the landmasses themselves, with far Siberia pulled away from the surface of the planet. The very latitudes of the global are twisted into the vortex of the jetliner's contrail. 

Upon the surface of these landmasses, thick red lines spread outward from Northern Europe to five continents. At the outer limits of the first generation jetliner's range, an impressive Oslo—Los Angeles was achieved, and lasted for decades, which as mentioned yesterday only came back in March 2016. Montreal and New York (the latter via Glasgow, it seems) were the only other North American destinations.

South America was, somewhat incredibly, more thoroughly covered, with the system's Lisbon—Recife—Rio de Janeiro—Sao Paulo—Montevideo—Buenos Aires—Santiago service. Africa was also served with a classic east African spine, Rome—Athens—Cairo—Khartoum—Nairobi—Johannesburg. None of these South American or African cities are served today. 

In addition to a half-dozen Near Eastern cities, SAS operated a trans-Asian trunk route to rival those of other European aviation pioneers, with a scissors-base at Karachi linking to Calcutta—Rangoon—Bangkok, which split to either Jakarta or onward to Manila—Tokyo, which swung northward to Anchorage to return to Copenhagen, here transgressing the print's nautilus-shell projection of the globe. 

Image via the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.

Lufthansa: The Worldwide Network, Part 2: The Afro-South American System.

Continuing from the previous post, it is, as always, interesting to note the enormous number of African destinations that were once served by European airlines. Lufthansa flew to a great many more African cities than today, shown here in three trunk lines extending across the Mediterranean. In the east, a route to Khartoum turns at Addis Ababa to make its way to Entebbe, then on to Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam, where the line splits to terminate at Mauritius or further south to Johannesburg, which meets the central trunk from Tunis—Tripoli to Accra, Lagos and then Kinshasa, shown cluster together in the Bight of Benin. Many of these sub-Saharan services have been presented on the Timetablist before.

In the Western Mediterranean, a third line passes again through North Africa and continues straight across Dakar towards South America. turning only slightly at Rio de Janeiro, plunging further to Sao Paulo—Montevideo—Buenos Aires and turning 90 degrees to finish to Santiago, which is also linked along the Andes to northernly American cities.

As it has so many times in the past, Timetablist would like to express its appreciation for Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal)'s incredible collection, and to say thanks  for allowing the reuse of these images under creative commons.

Swissair: The Intercontinental Routes, Winter 1972

The five-continent network of d stretched from Santiago to Singapore, Montreal to Manila. Four cities in North America, four in South America, three in South Asia, and five in East Asia were connected with what here is simply denoted as "Switzerland" sitting at the center of Europe, whether Zürich or Geneva is not specified. The only other European cities marked are Athens and Istanbul. A denser array in the Near East: Ankara, Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, Nicosia, Tehran, and Tel-Aviv.

A special thanks to Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal) for the fair-use rights.

The particularly-strong African network will be featured in the following post. 

ASKY Airlines Network, March/April 2014 (Western Portion)

A continuation of the previous post, looking westward from Lomé, ASKY competes on the regular routes between Abidjan, Bamako, Ouagadougou, Dakar, and Conakry, while also offering stand-alone services such as the very rare Monrovia (Spriggs Payne)-Bissau service, which unfortunately was realigned to link to Conakry, one of a number of route realignments announced shortly after this issue of the magazine came out.

Speaking of Lusophone links, as with the previous post, the map disproportionately displays the distant destinations of mother-carrier Ethiopian Airlines, here advertising the relatively new Lomé-Rio de Janeiro/São Paulo services. Unfortunately, the Rio portion of this operation was unsuccessful, even in the midst of the World Cup and the imminent Olympics, Ethiopian dropped Galeão airport from its Brazilian service less than a month after this publication.

Royal Air Maroc Network, November 1983

The state carrier of the Kingdom of Morocco has always had a uniquely-diverse network, with a strong presence in its home region of North and Western Africa, a dense array of flights across Western Europe, and a handful of long-range services overseas.

This is only more so today, but thirty years ago Royal Air Maroc already offered flights to half a dozen West African capitals, as far south as Libreville. All of them francophone except for tiny Malabo.

Francophonia features prominently across the network, linking seven cities in metropolitan France, from tiny Lille to Toulouse and Bordeaux. Much father afield, one of longest flights is to Montreal via New York, a route which the airline still serves today.

Interestingly, South America was also reached, with a single flight connecting Rio and Sao Paulo. At the eastern end of its extent, RAM's jets found their way to Damascus, Kuwait, and several other cities in the Middle East.

In this blood orange graphic (the larger background is a sunset photo), the Montreal-New York-Casablanca-Cairo-Jeddah route is emphasized in bold, for reasons unclear.

This image was derived from a post on Royal Air Maroc page of the encyclopedic Timetable Images blog. 

Alitalia: Worldwide service from Cairo, c.1960

A handsome vintage print ad from a cargo trade publication in Egypt from around 1960. On the corner of the shipping news, Alitalia boasts (in French of all tongues) of its sleek jet fleet, with four departures per week from Cairo to Rome aboard the state-of-the-art Caravelle VI, which passengers can also enjoy on regional connections to Beirut, Benghazi, Athens, Frankfurt, Paris, Zürich, Madrid, Tripoli, and more distant Tehran.

But most proudly, Alitalia offers ultramodern quad-jet intercontinental services across the globe: the Super DC-8 flagship shrinks the planet with services to Dakar, Karachi and Caracas, Nairobi, Bombay, Rio de Janeiro, New York and even Sydney.

Prospective passengers could visit the Alitalia offices at the Nile Hilton Hotel, or in Alexandria.

Air Afrique: The schedule from Abidjan, 1990 (continued)

Continuing with Air Afrique's summer 1990 schedule from Abidjan, originally posted on Airline Memorabilia. Here is the second page of the Abidjan schedule:

Alphabetically, the index begins with non-stop flights on UTA French Airlines to Nice on the weekends. Flights within the West African network, to Nouakchott, Ouagadougou,  Pointe Noire (via Brazzaville), and Yaoundé operate just a few times per week on an A-300.

There are near-daily connections to Paris, either in-directly via another Air Afrique city, or direct once weekly on a DC-10, in addition to the non-stop UTA services to CDG.

Interestingly, there is a single Thursday non-stop to Rio de Janeiro on-board VARIG listed. Other flights, to Rome, Stockholm, Tokyo, Toronto, Vienna, Washington (connecting at JFK on Pan Am) and Zürich. The section on Accra starts with flights to Brussels.

Ethiopian Airlines Addis Ababa-Lomé-Rio de Janeiro-Sao Paulo, July 2013

While no Brazilian carrier currently serves West Africa, as of July of this year the South American cone and the Western coast of Africa are connected via one of the world's more unusual routes. Ethiopian Airlines connected a fifth continent to its 55-year old network when a brand-new B787 Dreamliner took flight from tiny Lomé, Togo to Rio de Janeiro, with a continuing service to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Lome is also the home base for Ethiopian-affiliated super-regional ASKY Airlines. The Dreamliner apparently also serves the transcontinental Lomé-Addis Ababa section; ET506/507 spans half the globe thrice-weekly.

VARIG: South American Network, 1973

Brazil dominates commercial aviation in South America today, but four decades ago Rio de Janeiro was the primary gateway to the continent's southern cone, with Sao Paulo just another way station on the routes to Asuncion and Santiago, without, apparently so much as a link to Montevideo and Buenos Aires, at least not on VARIG. Manaus is a more important gateway, with connections to Bogota and Mexico City via Panama, as well as an Andean-hopper terminating at Iquitos, Peru. Recife and Salvador, and Belem all have flights into Europe, with the latter also linked to Cayenne and Paramaraibo, as well as Miami.

See the previous post for the global view of the VARIG route map of 1973. 

VARIG: Worldwide Network, 1973

The International route network of VARIG Brazilian Airlines in 1973 is a fascinating glimpse into a bygone world of flag carriers. Far more European cities are linked directly or indirectly with Brazil by its main airline than today, an indecipherable tangle of routes connects even tertiary airports such as Geneva and Copenhagen. The network funnels together at Rio de Janeiro, with Sao Paulo a tiny dot in Rio's shadow; today Sao Paulo is by far the dominant gateway into South America. Also note the southern Atlantic routes, particularly to Lagos and Cape Town. Ironic that four decades later this rising economic giant does boast a global carrier with an equal reach on continental Europe or Africa.

See the following post for a detail on the South American section of VARIG's network. 

TACA: The Lima Hub, 2011

No corner of the globe has undergone such a radical re-alignment of aviation interests than Latin America, in which all but a handful of state carriers and private operators (not least including VIASA, VASP, Transbrasil, VARIG, Lloyd Aero Boliviano, Ladeco, Ecuatoriana, Aviateca, NICA, and Sahsa) have disappeared. In addition to the asphyxiatingly ubiquitous LAN Group, and a variety of promising mainline start-ups and a plethora of low-cost ventures, South America is now territory covered by Grupo TACA, through its 1999 merger with Avianca.

That marriage included the rebranding of a unit based at Lima, formerly known as TransAm but now operating as TACA Peru, with Avianca as a 49% shareholder. The division serves ten major cities from Santiago to Santa Cruz to Sao Paulo, and connects northwards to TACA's hubs in Central America as well as Mexico City and Miami.

USAirways: Charlotte to Sao Paulo, June 2013

COPA's service from Boston to Panama is not the only new Latin American service launching from the Eastern US this summer. USAirways, which will never be known for bold, globe-trotting expansion, surprised many in 2009 when its strategy to capture the ever-increasing opportunities on international flights was to inaugurate service from its North Carolina hub at Charlotte Douglas to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

That service is now accompanied by a parallel sub-equatorial route, with a nightly flight from Charlotte to Sao Paulo, the country's and continent's largest city and most important business hub. The rather drab notice was posted on the airline's website, which notes that an old B767 will be rerouted to run the long inter-American leg. As uninspiring as the dull skyline picture used on the announcement page.

COPA: Non-stop from Boston to Panama City, Summer 2013

Latin America is possible starting this month from Boston Logan Airport, as Panamanian carrier COPA lands in New England for the first time. In the build-up to the launch, the airline has been blanketing local media with its adverts, such as the glossy, full-color spread in a recent issue of Boston Magazine, showing the glowing panorama of Medellin, Colombia, or the less vivid, but no less eye-catching view towards Sugar Loaf in Rio de Janeiro. Apparently, the airline sees their home hub of Panama as more of a transit point than a destination.

This is the first Latin American airline to service Boston Logan since the unsuccessful attempts in the previous decade by TACA to serve San Salvador, and Aeromexico to offer a non-stop to Mexico City.

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.

SAS: Map of the Long-Haul Routes, 1973

The impressive five-continent Scandinavian Airlines System in 1973, a gem of incredible collection of flickr user caribb. Here is the left-hand portion, showing the Western Hemisphere and the African continent.

SAS used Central and Southern European airports as more temperate way-stations for many of its transocean crossings: Zürich and Athens appear to be particularly large bases for the African routes, and the South American connection clearly stops at Lisbon, from whence it continues to Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Santiago. A second southern Atlantic routing runs through Robertsfield in Monrovia on the way to Rio de Janeiro.

East African routes reach Entebbe and Nairobi from Europe before proceeding further southward, spurring off at Dar Es Salaam and terminating at Johannesburg. Today Scandinavian does not even land at Cairo.

The North American network is much less different today: there are still transpolar non stops from Stockholm and Copenhagen to Newark and Chicago, but not New York-JFK. Seattle was a long-lasting station which closed only a few years ago, and Los Angeles, Toronto, and Montreal have all been dropped. The Scandinavian Airlines of the 21st century has also completely retreated from Africa, the Caribbean and South America.

Special thanks again to Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal) for both assembling an outstanding collection of vintage airline literature, and making it available to others via Creative Commons terms.

VARIG: Worldwide Network, c.1975

This undersized image file is a bit difficult to read, but is yet an informative mid-1970s route map of the Brazilian carrier VARIG. A conventional wall map overlaid with red route lines makes for an unoriginal and underwhelming document, but it even in its somewhat dull and diminutive format reveals some interesting information, especially the concentration of routes from Rio de Janeiro, whereas since this era the aviation action has decidedly shifted south to São Paulo.

Long trans-equatorial non stops to Miami and New York are juxtaposed with multistop zigzags such as Rio-Recife-Madrid-Rome-Tel Aviv or Rio-Recife-Paris-Frankfurt/London. The return journey from Iberia stops at Robertsfield, Monrovia-- the only African destination and location for a fatal 1967 VARIG crash on such a route. An Andean mini hub at Lima leads to jags up Mesoamerica, from Panama to Los Angeles.

There seem to be no routes out of Manaus or Brasilia, but this is a classic trap of cartography of this style, where it is hard to discern, especially from a distance, if a route is merely passing over a dot on a map, or pit stopping.