Kunming Airlines Routes, 2011-12

Two web-ads promoting the destinations of Kunming Airlines, a small, young Chinese airline, from its un-Romanized website. One advertisement uses the old roadside directional-signs-on pole image to note the cities, while the other seems to have devolved from an archaic compass-and-parchment map idea to then be overlaid with warped jpgs of the cities in question.

Both advertisements boast the same three flight schedules: Kunming-Changzhou (常州) -Dalian; a second, zigzagging route from Kunming to Chongqing and then Taizhou (台州) in Zhejiang Province; and thirdly a north-south Kunming-Changsha-Shijiazhuang line.

The airline's Wikipedia article lists a different roster of routes, but that is probably out of date, having been last updated in 2009. Commercial aviation in China is growing rapidly, and little Kunming airlines has only been in existence since 2005. Kunming Airlines's home page offers fares on flights to Xiamen, Guiyang, Harbin, Shenzhen, Qingdao, and Nanning as well as other cities across central China.

Tianjin Airlines Destinations, 2012

The destination map from Tianjin Airlines's English-language website, which, like Shandong Airlines's map, is only partially interactive and is not itself Romanized. Visitors can scroll their cursor over the cities' (Chinese) names, which then enlarge, but these cannot then be selected to show routes from that city, as is common on more advanced interactive maps. The message also blots out a central part of the territory, concealing a handful of destinations. Altogether it makes for only a cursory understanding of the airlines's system.

However, its clear that the airline is particularly prominent in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, with the airlines's Wikipedia article stating that both Hohhot and Ürümqi are secondary hubs.

The next post will detail the destinations in the southern portion of the map.

Shandong Airlines: The Northern Destinations, 2012

The top half of Shandong Airlines's semi-interactive online destination map, from its website, which at least has an English-language version, unlike some of its sister carriers. The flight routes, whose addition is awaited at the direction of the yellow message box at center, never materialized on a recent visit. Such information would have been enlightening, as the fast-growing airlines of China do not have up-to-date articles on Wikipedia, although that reporting, from July 2010, also lists international flights to Korea and Japan, which are not shown here.

It can be presumed that the major cities of the Shandong Province, principally its supercity Qingdao and its capital Jinan are primary hubs, but most of the major cities of the northeast: Shenyang, Dalian, Tianjin, as well as Beijing itself and the large cities at its south such as Shijiazhuang, Xi'an and Zhengzhou, are all noted here, as is far-off Urumqi.

The next post will feature the lower half of the same map.

Shenzhen Airlines Destinations, 2012.

Like Chengdu, the southern supercity of Shenzhen has its own namesake airline.

Unlike the posts from earlier this month, the super-dense city labels of Shenzhen Airlines's destination map are Romanized, but feature some interesting spellings, seemingly rendered directly from Chinese: Urumqi is transcribed as Wulumuqi, and Harbin is Haerbin. Like Hainan Airlines, the route network that connects these cities in not featured, so it is difficult to determine just how interconnected these cities are.

The next post will detail some of the southernly services, including an array of international flights to many of the capitals of southeast Asia.

Chengdu Airlines Network, Winter 2011-12

Today, China has such a great many airlines, many named solely after a certain large city. Although the massive province of Sichuan has its own Sichuan Airlines, its capital, colossal Chengdu, also has its own namesake carrier, 成都航空有限公司.

Chengdu Airlines most-recent route map from its website is shown above. The landmass of the People's Republic is made of cloud, a lovely detail, over which is laid the sizable network of the regional carrier, which seems to be expanding rapidly, as its Wikipedia article, updated only a year ago, shows only 15 destinations.

For the English-speaker, the network is still a bit mysterious, as only the Chinese characters are used to label the destinations. Thanks to Google Translate, we can establish many of the principal airports that Chengdu Airlines flies to:

北京 Beijing 宁波 Ningbo

长沙 Changsha 上海 Shanghai

成都 Chengdu 阳 Shenyang

重庆 Chongqing 深圳 Shenzhen

大连 Dalian 石家庄 Shijiazhuang

福州 Fuzhou 乌鲁木齐 Urumqi

广州 Guangzhou 武汉 Wuhan

杭州 Hangzhou 西安 Xi'an

昆明 Kunming 厦门 Xiamen

南京 Nanjing

The great number of routes out of Chengdu's Shuangliu International Airport itself (成都) are clear, and the hub is marked by the tailfin emblazoned with the company's logo. Further east, the airline appears to have a focal point at Changsha (长沙) and a serves many coastal cities in the massive Shanghai megalopolis: beyond Hongqiao airport, Nanjing (南京), Ningbo (宁波) and Hangzhou (杭州) are also shown here.

Farther north, the great Capital Airport at Beijing (北京) is represented by a diminutive star, with only a single route connecting it. As far as Chengdu Airlines own network is concerned, the northern focus city is apparently Shijiazhuang (石家庄 ), in Hebei province, southwest of Beijing.

The huge factory of the country, in Guangdong province, is underserved, with only a few routes connecting Guangzhou (广州) and Shenzhen (深圳). In the northwest, a pair of long routes land at the capital of Xinjiang, Urumqi (乌鲁木齐).