Discover Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen Airport, 2019

While the last few posts have discussed Istanbul's old Atatürk Airport, which closed last year to passenger flights, which shifted to the gigantic new airport, the Asian side of the city also has a large international airport: Sabiha Gökçen, which is advertised here by Turkish Airlines, At this particular moment in time, TK was expanding its presence at the secondary base, and at the bottom of this print advert is a list of almost twenty destinations in Europe and the Near East, from Kuwait to London (although it doesn't say which airport). The mention of "Northern Cyprus" likewise does not get specific, but presumably this refers to Ercan International Airport. 

After the opening of the new airport, Turkish re-centralized its mainline operations, and transferred almost all its international flights from SAW to its wholly-owned subsidiary, AnadoluJet. By the end fo the first quarter of 2020, Turkish only served a few domestic routes from SAW, which is dominated by rival low-cost Turkish carrier Pegasus Airlines, which links Istanbul's Asian districts as far as Manchester and Karachi. 

Azerbaijan Airlines Timetable, 2016 (Post 1 of 2)

Another page from the back of the Azerbaijan Airlines in-flight magazine, which publishes the state carrier's entire schedule—somewhat rare for an airline seat-back pocket. 

The schedule here shows a regular roster of flights to major European airports—once- or twice-weekly services to Barcelona, Berlin, Milan, and Prague, as well as more frequent flights to London (with one of the airline's widebody Dreamliners), Paris, as well as twice-weekly service to Tel Aviv and a flight to Dubai each morning. Elsewhere in Asia is the mid-night service to the Caspian oil town of Aktau, two hours away in Kazakhstan, via an Embraer E190, and the great eastern route: the thrice-weekly B787 Dreamliner service to Beijing. This is complimented by the airline's premier service, the Dreamliner's transatlantic long-haul to New York-JFK.  

AZAL Azerbaijan Airlines Network, mid-2016

Following on the previous post, by staying in the trans-Caspian region: here is the route map of another post-Soviet, Central Asian flag carrier, Azerbaijan Airlines, a rather convoluted web of polychrome routes, four different color markers for barely three dozen destinations including an array of code-shares.

Ignoring the third-party services, there are the main line routes themselves—labeled AZAL, the alternative acronym for the state airline—in a dark purple, an eclectic roster of cities across three continents, including, Barcelona, Berlin, Milan, Minsk and Prague in Europe to Dubai and Tel Aviv in southwestern Asia and distant Beijing in the east, shown in an inset at right. On the left, the pride of the operation, the non-stop Dreamliner flight from Baku to New York-JFK, which was almost axed last year.

In red are the leisure destinations of the short-lived AZALJET division, mostly to Aegean Turkey including Istanbul, Izmir, Bodrum, Dalaman, Antalya and Ankara, as well as Aktau, Kazakhstan, Tblisi, Tehran, Kazan, Lviv and Kiev. This unit only existed for barely a year, from March 2016 to 2017, before being folded back in to the central operations. 

TAROM Romanian Airlines: Worldwide Routes, c.1974

Continuing to look at the global extent of the airlines of the Eastern Bloc at their height, this unique map shows the routes of TAROM, the Romanian state carrier spreading across four continents. 

There are plenty of routes within Europe, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, culminating in an interesting Bucharest—Prague—Amsterdam—New York schedule as its sole operation across the Atlantic. This route may or may not have stopped in Gander—it is difficult to be certain as the cartography inconsistently marks destinations, with the red lines variously pass over or turn at a city without a marker, or break at a city on the map, or such breaks are marked by a circle around the underlying city.  

Several lines cross the Mediterranean to Algiers and Tripoli (possibly by way of Benghazi) in a similar vein to Czechoslovak Airlines. 

     

What is unquestionably the most notable aspect of the airline's operation occurs on the southeastern corner of the map: the long, winding tentacle reaching its way from Bucharest to Istanbul, then onward to Tehran and then reaching Karachi, where it elbow-bends along the Indus and over the Himalayas to reach Urumchi in Chinese Turkestan, where it continues across the vast People's Republic, where it seems to waystation at Hami, Yumen, and Taiyoun to finally terminate at Beijing. 

With just a little over 100,000 people live in tiny Yumen City, in Gansu province, which doesn't even boast an airport. While Hami, a small outpost in Xinjiang, has a regional airport, and Taiyoun's Wusu International is the principal airport of Shanxi Province, there are few international flights, and no European service, from these three cities. This trans-Socialist aviation envoy is surely a rarity in aviation history. 

El Al: Boston to Tel Aviv Non-stop, June 2015

In just the last four years, starting in about 2012, Boston's Logan International Airport has seen one of the most astonishing periods of international traffic growth in the history of American aviation. In a startlingly compacts period of time, beginning with JAL's dreamliner service to Narita in April 2012, Logan's somewhat pedestrian terminal E has seen an astonishing addition of new tail fins—especially those running long- and ultra-long haul intercontinental flights from New England: Hainan, Emirates, Cathay Pacific, COPA, Aeromexico, Turkish, and WOW Air. These are now being joined by Norwegian, Qatar Airways, Eurowings, Air Berlin, SAS, Thomson Airways and TAP Air Portugal, in addition to new services by Jetblue, Logan's de facto hub airline. 

Last year, in mid-2015, El Al was a somewhat unlikely participant in this onrush. The Israeli flag carrier launched a thrice-weekly B767-300 non-stop to the Holy Land gateway, Ben Gurion International Airport. This print ad, boasting a beachy scene of Tel Aviv's skyscraper-studded riviera, featured in Boston magazine ahead of the first flight. Likely paid for by Massport as part of the incitement package offered to El Al to secure and support the service. Whatever the state agency has been doing, it's been doing it right. 

Azerbaijan Airlines Destinations, Spring 2015

The curious case of the Azerbaijan Airlines route map, a semi-interactive presentation on the airline's slick web portal. Yellow-gold pegs portrude out from a slate-clay continent, showing destinations as expected as London, Frankfurt, Moscow, Paris, and Dubai and as interesting as Prague, Riga, Tel-Aviv, Tblisi and Minsk. To the north, a number of secondary Russian cities is served, but there's only a weak network southward: the map is equally intriguing for the cities not shown. Only New York and Beijing, new long-haul additions to the network, are not encompassed in this slice of globe.

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.

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. 

El Al: 3 times weekly to Boston, June 2015

Banner ads have started appearing for El Al's latest expansion into the United States market: thrice-weekly flights from Tel Aviv to Boston, beginning in June of this year.  El Al apparently served Logan Airport in previous decades, but it's return is part of the remarkable intercontinental expansion from Logan, which has seen the airport go from flights almost exclusively to Europe and Caribbean to non-stops to Tokyo on JAL, Beijing (and also in June Shanghai) on Hainan—these three all with the B787 Dreamliner,—as well as Emirates to Dubai, Turkish to Istanbul, and Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong, which begins in May. Copa Airlines recently started flights to Boston, and Aeromexico resumes non-stop flights to Mexico City starting in May as well.

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.

Munich Departures, August 2013

The last departures before midnight on a Sunday evening at Munich's airport in August of this year reveals many of Bavaria's more exotic visitors: South African Airways to Johannesburg, and Turkish to Izmir, and Emirates to Dubai, with long-haul services by Lufthansa from its second-biggest hub to Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Of shorter duration is an Easyjet hop to London Gatwick. Before midnight there are two flights to Moscow, one on S7 to Domodedovo and one on Aeroflot to Sheremetyevo. There is an El Al flight to Tel Aviv. There are also charter services to Palma de Mallorca and Antalya.

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.

Saudia: Seasonal Service to Orlando, 1994

Reprint of: "Saudi Airline Plans Seasonal Flights To Orlando International"
published on June 21, 1994, written by Jerry Jackson for the Orlando Sentinel:


Saudia Airlines, the flagship airline of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, will begin flying into Orlando via New York on July 4, Orlando International Airport officials said Monday.

Flights using Boeing 747-300 aircraft will operate twice a week from Jeddah and Riyadh, to Orlando International Airport with a brief stop at New York's Kennedy International Airport.

Saudia's flights initially are scheduled to operate through September, primarily for the summer tourism season in Florida. But airport officials said they hope the route will be successful and that service will be extended.

''Saudia is the flagship carrier for Saudia Arabia and the only airline offering nonstop service from the U.S. to the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia,'' said Keith Phildius, senior vice president for international development and marketing for Orlando International.

It is the second airline from the Mideast to announce seasonal service to Orlando in the past six months. In January, El Al Israel Airline launched twice weekly service to Orlando International through Feb. 20 and the end of the pilgrimage season to the Holy Land.

Also this year, Aeroflot Russian International Airlines began regularly scheduled service between Moscow and Orlando on a test basis.

''I think it says a lot that within a two or three-month period of time, two of the world's renowned airlines - Aeroflot and Saudia - are coming to Orlando. It's good news,'' Phildius said.

More than a dozen airlines provide regularly scheduled international service to 20 destinations from Orlando. Another 40 charter airlines fly frequently between scores of other foreign cities and Orlando.

Airport officials said the decision by Saudia Airlines to fly to Orlando, shuttling tourists and business travelers to Central Florida, helps Orlando stretch its vision as an international center.

''This goes beyond our traditional markets of Latin America and Europe,'' said Carolyn Fennell, a spokeswoman for the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority.

A representative of Saudia Airlines could not be reached Monday, and Orlando airport officials had no further details about the service.

Aegean Airlines: The Eastern Network, Summer 2012

Continuing from the previous post, Aegean Airlines' right-hand side from the same map, showing mostly seasonal operations as far distant as St. Petersburg, Tblisi and Kuwait. Its farthest year-round destination seems to be Moscow. Budapest, just at the page's spine, and Istanbul are also connected to Athens, while a mini hub at Larnaca, Cyprus links to Thessaloniki, Athens, and a number the islands, especially the sizable airports at Chania and Heraklion on Crete, with an all-A320 fleet. The only airport in Asia served year-round appears to be Tel Aviv.

Austrian Airlines: Routes East from Vienna, 2011

As mentioned in yesterday's post, Austrian Airlines still has a Near Eastern presence, but a with a different profile from a quarter-century ago. Here, on an increasingly-ordinary Innosked information interface is Austrian Airlines's international routes across Asia. The airline reaches as far as Bangkok, Beijing and Tokyo but has more routes in the Near East, from Tel Aviv to Tehran, and Amman to Dubai, but also including less common cities such as Baku and Yerevan. Most notably, Austrian has been among the few and first to serve Baghdad, and remains one of only two European airlines flying to Erbil in the Kurdish north (the other being Lufthansa).

A number of leisure cities are shown, from Larnaca in Cyprus to Male in the Maldives. The latter is formerly part of the portfolio of the previously-independent but still distinct Lauda Air, prior to its takeover into the flag carrier, when longer-range services to Asia were transferred to the parent. Some of the destinations in Turkey and Egypt shown here are actually served by Lauda, not Austrian.

El Al: The first flight to Addis Ababa, January 1970

Another tri-lingual envelope, this from El Al, which at the beginning of 1970 spread its wings to connect to the two ancient realms of the Holy Land and Abyssinia with a "Queen of Sheba" route from what it refers to as "Jerusalem" but is surely Ben Gurion Airport, normally referred to as Tel Aviv in regular usage, and the Ethiopian Capital, Addis Ababa. The indigo ink mark uses English, Hebrew, and Amharic and announce the launch. Despite the Jewish community in Ethiopia, the route is not served today.

Brussels Airport Departure Board #5

Early evening at Brussels Airport means departures by and large within Western Europe, mostly by Brussels Airlines, along with Air France, British Airways, Alitalia, Iberia and TAP. The only exceptions to this are the Eastern European carriers: Croatia Airlines to Zagreb and TAROM Romanian Airlines to Bucharest. The only non-EU flight is El AL to Tel Aviv at 7:00pm.

Brussels Airport Departure Board #1

As it approaches 11:30am in Brussels, several long-haul flights are closing their doors: United to Chicago (its flight to Washington is ten minutes after noon), and Brussels Airlines SN263 to Ouagadougou and Cotonou.

There are two delayed flights to London at the top of the board, and a Finnair flight to Helsinki is on final call.

There are several Mediterranean destinations up until mid-day: Turkish to Istanbul, Tunisair to Tunis, Alitalia to Rome; just thereafter is an Iberia connection to Madrid, an El Al departure to Tel Aviv and a Royal Air Maroc flight AT683 to Tangier.

Brussels Airport Arrival Channel, January 2012: Screen # 1

An early morning broadcast of the arrivals schedule for Brussels National Airport in January 2012, broadcast on the televisions in the guest rooms at the Sheraton Brussels Airport Hotel. Although the first flight in is a charter from Casablanca, the screen is dominated by Brussels Airlines's overnight arrivals from tropical Africa: the Cotonou-Ouagadougou SN264, Conakry-Banjul SN224, and Kigali-Entebbe SN465. Also an early flight from Domodedovo Airport in Moscow, and a United Airlines B777 service from Washington Dulles.

Spanair: International Routes from Barcelona, 2011

Where the previous post's graphic of Spanair's reach from El Prat was fanciful, this is more straightforward: a map of the wide array of Spanair non stops from Barcelona, reaching three continents, including two Sub-Saharan routes to Banjul and Bamako. Prior to its demise, Spanair was expanding rapidly across Africa, although the airline's Wikipedia entry, which lists Dakar and Malabo (but not Banjul) overstates the reach, and seems to conflate Air Europa (which formerly served Malabo and still flies to Dakar) and Spanair. It matters less now, in the wake of Spanair's demise; whatever the destinations, tens of thousands are currently stranded.