CEIBA Intercontinental Routes, November 2015

Little Equatorial Guinea has not one but two airlines; the privately-formed Cronos, detailed in the previous posts, and the state carrier, CEIBA Intercontinental, which mimics its sister with a series of regional routes, including Accra, Lomé, and Douala, but interestingly, according to this map, avoiding Yaoundé and Lagos. The airline also extends further, reaching Abidjan and Dakar, as well as Pointe-Noire and Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo. 

 Undoubtedly the pride of CEIBA's services is the long-haul to Madrid. The sole long-haul operation flying the Equatoguinean flag reaches Barajas in the erstwhile colonial metropole thrice-weekly. As a carrier still banned by the European Union, with a B777 operated by Portuguese aviation company White Airways, complete with a 3-class configuration.

The other proximas routes shown here: Casablanca, Johannesburg, Las Palmas, Lisbon and Luanda, have never come to pass. 

Flight Connections from São Tomé & Príncipe, c.2009

A lost fragment of the internet, this orphan gif, a visual explanation of flight connections to tiny São Tomé & Príncipe, on not-particularly-recent vintage.

The microscopic archipelago is hardly a hub of anything, other than delicious and rare cocoa, but on this map it is the crossroads of the center of the map, the closest republic to where the prime meridian meets the equator. Or, at least, the Lusophone eastern hemisphere.

Luanda and Lisbon are linked, the former via TAAG Angolan Airlines, which still to this day continues on to Sal de Cabo Verde, the latter via TAP (of course) but something else called STP Airways, the acronym denoting the little-known state carrier. Lagos and Libreville are also looped in, the first via Ceiba, the Equatoguinean state carrier, the latter via something simply labelled 'air service.' How perfectly vague.

Douala in nearby Cameroon is served by SCD, an unknown acronym, which may be related to African Connection Airways, which apparently provides air service on the island which may, or may not, include Malabo, Port Harcourt, Brazzaville, Port-Gentil, Pointe-Noire and even Bangui, if its own map is to be believed. TAP is apparently re-routing its services as of July 1st via Accra.

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.

TAAG Angolan Airlines: The African Routes, 2011

While TAAG serves several underserved African cities, particularly Bangui and Sao Tome, there are a number of gaps in its African network to be filled in, including several of the continent's most important air hubs, namely Nairobi, Lagos, Addis Ababa, Accra, Entebbe, Cairo and Dakar. Tiny Lusophone Bissau would also be a possible addition.

Luanda has the potential to be a conduit for traffic between Western and Southern Africa, funneling West Africans into the continent's southern cone. But this has yet to materialize. Presumably, TAAG functions on premium origin and destination traffic to fuel its booming economy.

The previous post shows TAAG's global network. The following post details TAAG's domestic services.

TAAG Angolan Airlines: The International Network, 2011

Last week's post of TAP Air Portugal's African routes leads naturally to the flag carriers elsewhere in Lusophone Africa. Fast-growing TAAG Angolan Airlines has rebounded in the past decade, first from the aftermath of the country's long civil war, and secondly from a two-year European Union ban, which blacklisted the airline from European airspace from 2007 to 2009.

Today, TAAG boasts an all-new fleet flying to five continents, including service to Portuguese-speaking Brazil and Cape Verde, and its old ally Cuba (how long this route will be worthwhile is another question), as well as five cities in Europe and an Asian route stretching to Dubai and Beijing (which alternates with Hainan Airlines's identical routing).

The following posts will show TAAG's continental and domestic networks in more detail.

TAP Air Portugal: The African Routes, Spring 2011

A post last week about the launch of Senegal Airlines was the first time that the city of Bissau had been featured on Timetablist. Here continues the profiling of Portuguese connections to Africa, with a portion of TAP Air Portugal's online map, showing its services to the continent.

Routes fan out from Lisbon to the capitals of former colonies: Bissau, Luanda, Maputo, and tiny Sao Tome, as well as non-Lusophone cities: Dakar at one end, Johannesburg at another, and Cairo on the far right corner. All are apparently served non-stop. At left, the many TAP routes from Lisbon and Porto to Brazil soar past Cap Vert toward South America.

Gabon Airlines: Worldwide Network*, c.2010

After the previous post's historic example from the glory days of Air Gabon, in which that country's current flag carrier was briefly mentioned, it'd be appropriate to provide some more detail on that rather less celebratory successor, Gabon Airlines.

The erstwhile Air Gabon's angular, sharp-eyed, forest-green character has been replaced with a banal abstract assemblage, which is difficult to discern on the tiny B767 above, which spurts a toxic green contrail across the center of the continent as it roars off toward East Asia, away from any of the carrier's true destinations (which are equally difficult to discern, as discussed below). Gabon Airlines' flagship A340 sports no scheme whatsoever.

In comparison to the last post's Air Gabon network from three decades previous, its interesting to note that Metropolitan destinations (Nice, Marseille) and Rome are not shown above, with the most notable additions being Beirut and Dubai. In its home region, a thick array of Gulf of Guinea destinations lacks only Yaoundé and Kinshasa. Most curiously absent from the map is Gabon's second city, Port Gentil.

But this does not mean the airline does not serve it: Wikipedia's article on Gabon Airlines refers back to the carrier's website, which shows a recent schedule listing only Paris CDG, Marseille, Pointe-Noire, Libreville, and Port-Gentil. Its not clear whether these are recent adjustments to a larger systemwide network, or represent the entire extent of the carrier's services. Another section of the website theoretically allows for online purchases of tickets to destinations including Douala, Malabo, and São Tomé, as well as domestics services to Franceville and Moanda. But then this has only a scant relationship to the route map above, with its dozen other cities.

The unpainted A340 occasionally appearing at CDG Aerogare-1 truly represents Gabon Airlines: something of a mystery.