Air Astana: Nine Times Weekly from Dubai to Almaty, late 2019

A print advertisement for the Kazakhstani flag carrier, Air Astana, promoting the airline's ample schedule of services from Dubai to Almaty, the country's business hub and former political capital. The text also mentions 5 weekly flights from Dubai to Astana, the country's newer capital, built in the late 1990s and early 2000s in the central steppes of the vast Central Asian nation with landmarks by Norman Foster. More recently,  the capital was renamed Nur-Sultan in early 2019 in honor of the country's long-time dictator leader who retired—resulting in the curious circumstance that the state airline will continue to use the older name, which it had originally adopted to promote the new capital (itself named for the crown of a traditional Kazakh hurt) when it was built,  while the city itself is no longer called Astana. 

At the bottom of the paragraph of text, a few other destinations are listed to promote Air Astana as a regional connector: the regional capital Atyrau, as well as Shymkent, Tashkent, capital of neighboring Uzbekistan, Moscow, and Dushanbe, Tajikistan. 

The editorial board of the Timetablist has taken the situation under review, and in keeping with long-standing policy, is debuting the tag Nur-Sultan, while continuing to also use the separate tag Astana for ease of reference. New guidance is always issued at the Keywords Note, should there be any changes. 

Interflug: Winter Timetable, 1975-76, Part 2

Continuing from the last post, more facsimile fun from the back pages of the Interflug timetable for November 1975 to March 1976. Everything is out of Berlin in this case, and what might be most remarkable are the infrequency of services: barely more than once per day to next door Warsaw, and about four times per week Bucharest and the Yugoslav run to Zagreb—Belgrade as well as Sofia, with once per week to the Black Sea resort town of Varna. On top, the Czechoslovak services show some variety, especially fun is the once weekly Tu-134 landing at the Carpathian ski resort of Poprad-Tatry, a premier feature on the Timetablist. 

Further down the sheet is the long, once-weekly pan Asia flight to North Vietnam via Moscow, Tashkent, Karachi and Dhaka. At lower left is the now well-known Berlin—Algiers—Bamako—Freetown—Conakry twice weekly operations, and at the grand finale is the twice-weekly hop over the Iron Curtain, northward to Helsinki.

Dubai: Departures from Terminal 1, January 2015

One of two posts today showing the Departures Boards at Dubai International from back in late January 2015. Dubai's remarkable development as a global city is inextricable to the incredible growth of its airport. While the unprecedented burgeoning of hometown Emirates airline has been foundational in this expansion, and in 2014 Dubai overtook London Heathrow to become the most important airport in the world by international passengers. However this is not solely due to Emirates, but also to a myriad of intercontinental and regional air carriers, from its global rivals to exotic and rare birds from Dubai's vast aviation hinterland of South and Central Asia and Africa. 

Here, in a window of less than three hours of activity at Terminal 1, Dubai International demonstrates its role as a global hub. Arch-rivals Virgin and British Airways both depart for Heathrow at the exact same time. Regional kin such as Saudia, Gulf Air, Oman Air and Qatar Airways are off to their hubs. Two Iranian carriers depart for Persian cities: State carrier Iranair to coastal Bandar Abbas, and an A340 sports the green swan of Mahan Air on its way to the capital. At 11:25, Air Astana leaves for Almaty. Further east, Jet Airways, SpiceJet and IndiGo are off to seven Indian cities, and PIA departs for Peshawar at 11:40. 

The African offerings are perhaps even more interesting: TAAG to Luanda, Arik to Abuja, Tunisair to Tunis. Or more specifically, they were more interesting: remarkably, all three operations were scrapped in later 2015, in the face of relentless competition from Emirates and economic struggles across that continent.  

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.

Uzbekistan Airways: The Domestic Routes, c.2008

The Domestic Routes of Uzbekistan Airways, which provides an essential transport network in such a vast, inhospitable, and oddly-shaped country, double-landlocked in the center of Asia.

Naturally, the capital serves as the hub, roughly in the middle of the country, positioned between the ancient Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bukhara and Ferghana in the east. Tashkent's importance is shown in large, bold, capital letters, with the Uzbekistan Airways swan logo as its point. Nukus in distant Karakalpakstan is the westernmost destination, where the map over-optimistically represents the decidemated Aral Sea as a serene lake of glistening aqua.

Likewise, the map itself presents a country with less than 10% arable land as a system of lush, green valleys, held aloft in an azure blue sky, floating in the clouds.

This item found via this website.

Yakutia Air Company: Munich to Irkutsk non-stop, 2011

Twice weekly to the natural paradise on Lake Baikal, boasts this rather straightforward notice from the Munich Airport summer timetable. Russia is one of Germany's most important trading partners, but it is still interesting to see such low-profile Russian carriers such as Yakutia Air Company linking Bavaria and Siberia. The service is seasonal.

Yakutia's primary base at Yakutsk links the Sakha Republic with Seoul, Harbin, Qingdao; from the Irkutsk Oblast in serves Dushanbe and Tashkent. The airline also has a seasonal presence at Prague, Barcelona, Larnaca, Rimini, Trieste, Dresden and Hanover.

Intercontinental Destinations from Munich, Summer 2011: Eastern Hemisphere

A detail of the righthand side of the previous post. Although still primarily a landing point for the Transatlantic bridge into the heart of Europe, technology- and business-dense Munich has a large number of Asian services, especially among Lufthansa and its Star Alliance partners: All Nippon, Air China, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, and South African Airways all join up with United, USAirways and Air Canada at Munich.

Elsewhere, the close links between Russia and Germany are manifested in a handful of ad hoc Siberian cities.

British Airways, Africa and Southwest Asia, Autumn 1999

Like every other carrier, British Airways has scrapped a handful of its African routes in the last decade. Here Abidjan, Durban, Harare, Lilongwe, and Windhoek are seen, which have since been dropped from the BA network. One destination missing from the map is Abuja.
Note also the Central Asian cities, Bishkek, Almaty, and Tashkent, and the curious location of Ashhgabat, incorrectly shown here south of Tehran. None of these routes lasted to the present. The Caucasian cities, Baku, Tblisi and Yerevan, are also no longer served; the post-Soviet exuberance was not enough to support British Airways's expansion into the CIS.

Aeroflot Worldwide 2005-6

This, when juxtaposed with yesterday's posts, shows the incredible erosion of Aeroflot's once-vast global network. Only Luanda remains among its formerly plentiful African stations. South America has no service, and gone are Mexico City, Seattle, San Francisco, and Miami.

Elsewhere, the airline's reach is equally deteriorated: yesterday's Singapore, Shenyang, Harbin, Karachi, Calcutta, Kuala Lumpur and Colombo and the Kazakh capital are gone.

The next post will show what's left of Aeroflot's European operations.