Norwegian Long Haul: Current and Future Routes, Summer 2017.

It is by now obvious to remark that the world's aviation market is now at the dawn of a golden age of low-cost long-haul flying. While largely pioneered in parts of Australasia, the fast-expanding boom is currently focused on the North Atlantic market, led by the seemingly now-ubiquitous Norwegian Air Shuttle. 

From its first B787 deliveries, the airline has forayed far and wide, first to Fort Lauderdale and New York JFK, then Bangkok. At the beginning of this year, the young but well-funded airline shocked the Northern Hemisphere with the sudden announcement of a huge capacity increase, made possible by the arrival of brand-new next-generation B737Max jets. Norwegian paired off six northwestern European cities: Belfast, Bergen, Cork, Dublin, Edinburgh and Shannon, with three New England airports: Hartford, Providence, and, most surprisingly, Stewart Airport in suburban Westchester County, New York. As can be seen above, the map is now to crowded to follow each individual route line. 

Further complicating comprehension, this route map also has almost as many future destinations as current operations. Over the next twelve months, the ever-growing fleet of red-throated Dreamliners will take to the Scandinavian skies to reach a further four U.S. airports: Austin, Chicago, Denver and Seattle are all scheduled before summer 2018. Norwegian also continues its Southeast Asian expansion with the addition of Gatwick-Singapore in September, going head-to-head with aviation's biggest players in a highly competitive corridor. 

That flight will not be the airline's only super long-haul out of Gatwick. Within the same time frame, Norwegian will also reach its first South American destination, Buenos Aires, from Gatwick. A rather unexpected venture, the route is especially noteworthy not only as Norwegian spreads to yet another continent, but that the airline already has a long-haul base under development at Barcelona, where IAG's brand-new LCLH Level is flying to Buenos Aires, which, furthermore, is in direct competition with legacy flag carrier Aerolineas Argentinas, one of that once-great carrier's few remaining European destinations.

With industry observers already questioning the Norwegian's rapid long-haul expansion and its business practices in general, we'll have to see if Norwegian can really maintain these routes, much less continue its global domination. 

Qatar Airways Route Network, November 2016: Europe

Like it's arch-rival Emirates, Qatar Airways blankets Europe with over two-dozen non-stops from Doha, although many of these are with its narrow-body A320 aircraft, the airline also intersperses its A330, B777, and B787 widebodies into these operations. Paris and London also see Qatar's double-decker A380 superjumbos. Qatar serves a number of cities which seldom see intercontinental flights, especially in southeastern Europe and the Balkans: Sarajevo and Skopje in particular. 

Norwegian Air Shuttle: The Long-Haul Destinations, November 2016

The recent route map of Norwegian Long Haul, the dreamliner-fleet division of Norwegian Air Shuttle, rapidly covering the globe.

The emphasis on dominating the low-fare brackets of the trans-Atlantic trade are clear, with eight American cities served, only three of which are predominantly leisure destinations: Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, and Orlando. Although utilizing some secondary airports like Oakland and BWI, Norwegian has not shied away from primary gateways such as LAX and JFK and other major airports like Newark. As mentioned in the first post this month about Norwegian, Barcelona will soon be added, giving several of these U.S. cities flights from six European airports on Norwegian B787s.

Four Caribbean destinations are also reached, these, interestingly served from these same North American cities: Boston—Guadeloupe and Boston—Martinique began in February 2016 before any flights to Logan from Copenhagen, Oslo, or London Gatwick. The French West Indies are served from New York and Baltimore as well. San Juan and St. Croix are only served from Europe.

The network is far less developed in the easterly direction. Reminiscent of the posts from earlier this month, but one Asian destination is served: Bangkok.

Norwegian Air Shuttle: New Route to Fort Lauderdale from Paris, August 2016

Yesterday's post discussed the acceleration of Newark Airport into an intercontinental gateway beginning around 1990, and the role of a Scandinavian airline in that growth. Here we have a similar circumstance, as the compact Ft. Lauderdale International Airport has grown from a discount, secondary airport into a major intercontinental gateway to balance Miami International in handling trans-ocean traffic into South Florida. 

Ft. Lauderdale's profile was elevated with the appearance of Caribbean and Latin American feeder flights and Canadian snow-bird services. Today, flag carriers now reach Ft. Lauderdale from as far as Colombia, Ecuador, and, since 2014, Brazil. Most recently—and most astonishingly—there is now nonstop service to Dubai, with Emirates commencing non-stop B777 flights this week. Announced barely two months ago, UAE megacarrier chose FLL over Miami as its 11th U.S. gateway due to its inline partnership with Jetblue.

But as impressive as the 14+ flight distances are, a recent development that has greatly raised Ft. Lauderdale as a gateway to Europe has been the arrival of Norwegian Air Shuttle's dreamliners from its Long Haul division. Paris-CDG is the fifth European city that Norwegian is connecting to Broward County, beginning flights this past August. Norwegian will add Barcelona as its sixth non-stop next year. Also announced back in October: British Airways will also start flying from London-Gatwick in 2017, and Condor made the airport part of its nationwide entry into the U.S. market from Frankfurt. 

SAS: Oslo-Newark Launch, March 2011

Continuing to look at SAS, this magazine page advert announced daily service from Oslo to Newark commencing on 28 March 2011, with an A330. The Scandinavian air confederation has a unique history with the New Jersey airport, having moved all its New York-area operations there in 1989-1990 as part of its partnership with—and ownership stake in— Continental Airlines, one of the early precursors to today's global alliance format, although it seems that in those days the transatlantic flights were only to Copenhagen and Stockholm. Those cities are listed here, along with Bergen, Stavanger, and Helsinki, somewhat curiously, in that Finland is not a member of the SAS system.

SAS: Intercontinental routes, 2003

Yesterday's post, with its many routes between Scandinavia at Thailand, relate to this polar-projection route map, showing the intercontinental routes of Scandinavian Airlines in 2003. A decade ago, those consisted of flights to the United States and East Asia, mostly from Copenhagen, although there were also Stockholm—Chicago,  Stockholm—Newark, and Oslo—Newark flights.

Since the publication of this timetable, there have been a number of changes: Seattle was dropped in 2009 after 42 years of non-stop service, Bangkok followed in 2013, ending 60 years of service, and flights from Singapore are now operated only by Singapore Airlines. In their place, Shanghai was added to the network in 2012,  San Francisco flights started in 2013, and Stockholm—Hong Kong began in 2015. 

The expansion has continued rapidly in the past year: Stockholm—Los Angeles was relaunched in March 2016, a return to Southern California after three decades of absence, and two routes to Miami began in September 2016.

Thai Airways Route Table: Routes from Phuket and elsewhere, November 2016

As shown in the previous post from yesterday, the remarkable Route Table in the back of Thai Airways's in-flight magazine indexes every route of the airline. After listing all the routes out of Bangkok, the remainder is given over to flights from other airports.

While many are leisure routes direct from Phuket, namely Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and St ockholm, there is a direct trans-border hop from northern Chiang Mai to Kunming in neighboring Yunnan province, and a somewhat anachronistic link between Karachi and Muscat, recalling pan-Asian journeys of an earlier era.Likewise, the Taipei—Seoul route shows the vestiges of the decades when a handful of flag carriers operated across East Asia.

Equally fascinating are a pair of what might be categorized as religious routes: Gaya—Varanasi—Bangkok (these two cities premiering here on The Timetablist). These services clearly reflect the importance of Hindu pilgrimages to Thai's customer base. The closest examples to these types of operations would be Aer Lingus's pilgrimage operations of an earlier era, which are now almost entirely covered by charter operations. 

Thai Airways Route Table: Routes from Bangkok, P-Z, November 2016

Continuing on from the previous series of posts, here is the second page of Thai Airways's Route Table in the back of its in-flight magazine. This post finishes tagging all the destinations from Bangkok, as nearby as Siem Reap (this post marking the premier of this destination on The Timetablist) and Vientiane, to as distant as Zürich, Rome and Stockholm. Note that both Haneda and Narita are present for Tokyo, and Xiamen is one of the mainland Chinese cities which have joined the network. 

Although Thai Airways is diminished from its previous glory days, because of the strength of Thailand as a leisure destination, it remains present in a number of secondary European gateways, as this route table shows. 

Thai Airways: The International Routes, 2013

Like Garuda (not to mention Malaysia Airlines), Thai Airways International is still a going concern but is significantly smaller than it has been in the past. This table, from the back of Thai Airway's inflight magazine from 2013, illustrates the point. Information listing the airline's international services from Bangkok from R—Z, with Rome no longer a destination. A handful of secondary leisure routes are shown thereafter, such as Copenhagen—Phuket and Stockholm—Phuket, and intra-Asian flights such as Hong Kong—Seoul and Hong Kong—Taipei, as well as the old Seoul—Los Angeles route which was removed from the schedule in 2015 after 35 years of service.

Also interesting here are the number of routes to tertiary Indian cities, specifically Varanasi and Gaya, presumably as pilgrimage sites. 

ČSA Czechoslovak Airlines Route Map, c.1975: Detail of the Bratislava Hub

Continuing to view the details of the Czechoslovak Airlines route map from the 1970s, the upper-right of the pinwheel shows the airline's secondary operation at Bratislava, the Slovak capital. Prague dominated not only the "OK Network" but also nearly every other aspect of Czechoslovak public sphere, yet the expansive ČSA system granted Bratislava with an interesting variety of connections: to nearby Poprad-Tatry, via Bourgas, and a half dozen other Eastern Bloc capitals. Also Beirut and  Kuwait, rather randomly.

Cartographically, what's curious is that these destinations were all printed a second time to show a shower of routes springing forth from Bratislava. Kuwait, Sofia, Bucharest and Beirut are all served from Prague and shown elsewhere on the map, although more at 5 o'clock which might have made the graphics a bit convoluted. Stranger are Moscow, Kiev, and Leningrad, whose links to Prague are directly adjacent to the Bratislava point, as seen here.

Warsaw and Berlin-Helsinki (here weirdly rendered as Helsink) are at high noon, from Prague.

Sabena Network: c.1955

Post-war, pre-jet age Sabena still had an impressive reach, with a dense network in Europe spinning out from the low countries northward to Oslo and Stockholm and east to Prague and Vienna. A single westward push stopped at Shannon before destinations unspecified in North America.

Southward, planes reached the Mediterranean at Nice, and stretched further down to Lisbon where a vague connection to South America is suggested. More articulated is the operation at Rome, with planes splitting off for North Africa,  the first crossing the Sahara to stop at Kano before finally reaching the vast Belgian Congo at Leopoldville. A non-stop from Brussels reached into the upper reaches of the Congo to terminate at Elisabethville and Stanleyville, and a single lined continued all the way down to Johannesburg.

In the east, flights criss-crossed at Athens, only reaching Tel Aviv in the Near East, with another flight to Cairo, which turned down to also reach the eastern cities of the colony.

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.

Thai Airways: the Western Long-Haul routes, 2013

The result of the explosive growth of tourism to Thailand in the last three decades has resulted in Thai Airways serving an unusually large array of European airports for such a distant destination. This luscious, orchid-colored route map, from Thai Airway's in-flight magazine from last year, shows more than half a dozen non-stops to Europe, from common megahubs like London, Paris, and Frankfurt, to secondary cities like Madrid, Zürich, Munich, Moscow and Milan, to cold-weather gateways like Brussels, Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm which have fewer intercontinental services.

Outside of Europe, Thai is one of a handful of Asian carriers to fly to Johannesburg, and on the extreme right-hand side of the page the flights to Dubai and Muscat (the latter via Karachi) are shown.

Ethiopian Airlines: Long-haul to three continents, Spring 2013

Even before it reached Brazil in July, the global network of Ethiopian Airlines spread long-haul routes from Addis Ababa to three other continents, including three cities on Mainland China (Beijing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou), plus Hong Kong; a new route to Kuala Lumpur via Bangkok, two cities in India (Delhi and Mumbai), and two cities in Italy (Rome and Milan), plus five other European cities: London, Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt, and Stockholm. The route to Rome continues on to Washington Dulles, and there is a new non-stop to Toronto on a 787 Dreamliner.

Addis Ababa Bole Airport Departures 23 April 2013, #2

The second screen of Addis Ababa's Bole Airport evening departures show many more options on Ethiopian Airlines near and far, from Muscat to Washington, Tel-Aviv to Stockholm, reflecting the breadth of the ancient country's modern connections both in terms of trade and diaspora communities.

Frankfurt Airport Departures, August 2012

Just twenty minutes of mid-weekday activity at Frankfurt Airport in late August 2012, showing departures (mostly of Lufthansa, naturally) as near as Salzburg and as far away as Kuala Lumpur on Malaysia Airlines and Charlotte on USAirways.

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: Stockholm-Chicago, February 1972

A soaring jumbo jet, emblazoned with a blue Viking dragon, roars toward the holder of this envelope announcing the arrival of SAS 747s at Chicago O'Hare from Stockholm, forty years and one month ago. The route is still served today (but now with Airbus aircraft).

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.

Finnair Worldwide Network, c.2009

A global route map of Finnair as viewed from the north pole. The airlines's routes to New York and Miami cross into Arctic airspace, while its long routes to Asia fan out to the right. A small bushel of European short-hauls, seeming tiny by comparison, do not depict all of the airline's regional routes; perhaps this is meant to simply illustrate connections to its long-haul network.

Special thanks to the website airreview.com for the image.