Etihad Route Map, September 2016: The Americas

Etihad operates some of the longest non-stop flights in the world from Abu Dhabi to the Western Hemisphere, as shown here on the left-hand side of its route map from last fall. While the 11 to 13 hour runs to New York JFK and Washington Dulles (launched in 2013) are hardly short-haul, it is the airline's 16 to 17 hour jaunts to California that remain atop the rankings: Abu Dhabi—Los Angeles, commenced in October 2013, is 5th, Abu Dhabi—San Francisco is 10th. Abu Dhabi—Dallas is 15th. It should also be noted that Etihad was the first of the ME3 to serve Chicago, first reaching the mid-American metropolis in 2009 as its second U.S. city—half a decade before Emirates and Qatar finally served O'Hare.

As with the Europe map, the North American cartography is a confusing jumble of codeshare connections, a knot of blue lines nearly obliterating the destinations at Etihad actually does serve. 

The single South American route, the non-stop to Sao Paulo, gives the airline and its home airport claim to six continent service, one of only a few airlines and airports that can boast such breadth. It was therefore all the more surprising that Etihad has been forced to retreat from the market: the last non-stop between Abu Dhabi at Brazil will fly in late March, a stunning defeat for a Gulf megacarrier.

Emirates Route Map, August 2016: The American Routes

Yesterday's post introduced the latest Emirates route map, with its gorgeously-tessalated, neo-Fullerian projection. Left off that first post was this second page, showing the Americas exclusively (and a large swath of the southeast Pacific, interestingly). 

Emirates increasing number of routes to North America are some of the longest commercial flights in the world, especially the ultra-long haul Dubai—San Francisco and Dubai—Los Angeles runs, whose twice daily A380 services are scheduled in at a staggering 16 hours 15 minutes, currently the world's sixth longest non-stop flight, followed by Dubai—Houston, which is ninth. Dubai—Dallas is 17th, and Dubai—Fort Lauderdale is 24th, and Dubai—Orlando is 28th. 

Even though it doesn't rank as highly, the Sao Paulo non-stops generally top 15 hours, the Buenos Aires link an even longer haul. Indeed, the shortest route on this map is the controversial fifth-freedom Milan—New York JFK service. 

While Emirates continues to add U.S. gateways (as was discussed in posts earlier this month), it is interesting to note that several large cities have yet to be reached, particularly Mexico City but also Vancouver and Montreal (which is served by Qatar and Turkish Airlines). Miami was recently bypassed for Ft. Lauderdale, a curious development in American intercontinental aviation which has been covered extensively earlier this month.

The map does include the Dubai—Panama route, which at 17.5 hours would soar in the rankings of ultra-long haul services. However, this launch has been delayed for almost a year and the exact start date has not been set, it is both drawn on the system and featured in the box at lower right, which also announces the start of flights to Bologna and Bamako—the table itself an index of the extraordinary breadth and growth of this behemoth airline. 

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.

CP Air: Worldwide Network, c.1983

The wonderfully random route network of Canadian Pacific Airlines in its classic CP Air age, when it was the airborne division of Canada's premier transport companies but not able to fly it's premier international routes. A unique collection of flights fan out to four other continents, two across the Pacific: Vancouver—Tokyo—Hong Kong and Vancouver—Honolulu—Nadi—Sydney, and one venturing south to the cone of Latin America: Mexico City—Lima—Santiago—Buenos Aires.

From the Alberta prairie, a transpolar route links Edmonton to Amsterdam, linking to a Rome—Athens route. A second trans-Atlantic flight from Montreal lands at Amsterdam, while a third European route also starts in Montreal, but leaps southward to Santa Maria in the Azores, then to Lisbon, Madrid, and connecting again at Rome. Paris and London are absent.

Mexicana: The Americas Unified, 1993

Mexicana boasted of its pan-American network in 1993: stretching from Santiago to San Francisco, Caracas to Chicago, Montreal to (not quite) Montevideo. As with Eastern Air Lines, it's interesting that there are no Brazilian routes: Buenos Aires is the farthest down the cone that Mexicana reached. The inclusion of secondary cities such as San Jose, California, San Antonio and Denver is interesting, compared to the absence of larger airports such as Houston, Dallas, and Washington. There are also only three capitals of Central America in the network: Guatemala, Panama, and San Jose de Costa Rica.

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.

TACA Airlines Network, 2011

Fast-forward from the previous post, and tiny El Salvador has, through merger and might, grown to one of the largest inter-American airlines and virtually the only international airline between Mexico and Panama, with focus cities in San Jose, Costa Rica and Guatemala City. The Spanish fine print at the bottom of the map mentions the original state carriers, such as LASCA, NICA, Aviateca, and newly-formed national divisions such as TACA Perú, that form the modern airline. The latter is based from a sizable hub at Lima, detailed in the next post.

In North America, the airline runs as far northwest as San Francisco and as far northeast as Toronto, although an earlier route to Boston failed. New Orleans is gone, but Orlando and Dallas have been added, along with highly-prestigious and lucrative routes to Washington and New York. The next few posts looks at the growing airline in detail.

Athens International Airport Departure Board, 10 August 2012

An hour-and-a-half's worth of activity on an August Friday morning at Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport in Athens shows the contemporary extents of service out the Greek capital. Service across the Atlantic to both Toronto and Philadelphia by Air Canada and USAirways respectively, represent the long-haul, although MEA's flight to Beirut, the unusual Armavia's departure for Yerevan, and Cyprus Airways' service to Larnaca illustrate some of the varied services to the Near East that still exist out of Athens. Cyprus also offers its own service to Chania on Crete, while Star Alliance member Aegean Airlines and the still-barely-alive Olympic Air also service the many islands. Air France to Paris and Transavia to Amsterdam round out the next 90 minutes of activity.

CP Air: Worldwide Routes, October 1978

The incredibly complex connectivity of the classic Canadian Pacific Air Lines route network in October 1978 is shown here in this blazoning vintage advert. Then operating as CP Air, the aviation arm of the Canadian conglomerate offered passenger services to 14 international airports on five continents from no less than five separate gateways across Canada.

Particularly key was the European gateway of Amsterdam, which lined to four Canadian cities: Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg and Toronto, although somewhat oddly not its primary airport, Vancouver. CP Air jets also departed Toronto for Milan, and Rome, with onward service to Athens from both Rome and Amsterdam. Rome and Lisbon, but not Amsterdam, were served from Montreal, which also enjoyed service to Mexico City. Toronto was also linked to Mexico City as well as Acapulco and Lima. Whether the continuing service from Lima to Santiago, finally terminating at Buenos Aires, were originally from Toronto or Vancouver is unclear.

CP Air also connected all its international gateways, except Montreal, to Honolulu, from whence it plunged far south to Antipodea. CP Air's Pacific operations, shown above, will be detailed in the following post.

Air India: International Routes, c. 2012

Air India's global reach appears more comprehensive at first than it really is given this map's format. Once it is understood that the red lines indicate other air carriers, Air India's operations are in proper perspective: most of the cities on the map are unnecessary, including those such as Chicago which Air India served for years but flies to no more. In fact, the state carrier of one of the world's largest countries incredibly serves fewer than 25 international cities. Note the non-stop from Frankfurt to Amritsar, and another from Bangalore to Singapore, and that Kolkata has no international services. The world of Air India is rather diminutive.

The following post will detail the inset of the Middle Eastern routes.

Jet Airways: 3 Direct Daily Flights from Brussels to India, January 2012

Jet Airways, India's premier international carrier, operates a so-called "scissors hub" out of Brussels National Airport, connecting its North American destinations (New York-JFK, Newark, and Toronto) and its subcontinental bases (Mumbai, Chennai, and Delhi), so that eat many times there may be multiple Jet Airways wide bodies parked at the terminals at Zavantem. The above advertisement is from a backlit billboard above the departures hall at BRU.

Brussels Airport Arrival Channel, January 2012: Screen # 2

The second screen flashing on the arrivals channel at the Brussels Airport Sheraton also features an overnight Brussels Airlines flight from equatorial Africa, this one the Kinshasa-Yaoundé SN354, but is otherwise a bit more diversified: shown here is Ethiopian Airlines own service into Brussels from Addis Ababa, via Milan Malpensa, and at the close of the hour the two blades of Jet Airways's scissor hub begin to close in on Zavantem, as nonstops from Toronto, Newark, New York-JFK, and Delhi arrive within a span of five minutes. In between, a handful of classic flag-carrier short-hauls from nearby EU hubs touchdown: KLM from Amsterdam and Lufthansa from Frankfurt.

Hainan Airlines and Hong Kong Airlines: Some of the Routes Operated, 2012.

A map of "some of the routes" from Hainan Airlines's most-recent timetable, showing its services to Europe, Asia, Africa and North America, with a second array of more regional routes of Hong Kong Airlines from Chep Lap Kok, which are detailed in the next post.

Note that the airlines only overlap at Beijing, Moscow, and Bangkok, but that the latter is shown twice in a layout which only approximates the true geographic relations of the destinations.

SATA Internaçional Network, 2011

As mentioned in the two previous posts on TAP's 1974 network, the contemporary situation off the Straits of Gibraltar finds much of the service between the Azores archipelago and the rest of the world handled by SATA Air Açores/SATA Internaçional, whose two arms wrap impressively from San Francisco Bay to Stockholm. At the center of this world is a magnifying glass enlargement of the Azores themselves, as well as Madeira; exhaustive services between and within the islands themselves-- the center of the map will be detailed in the next post.

The Intercontinental Destinations from Munich, Summer 2011: Western Hemisphere

Despite the increasing presence of exotic global carriers and the extensive reach of the Star Alliance, Munich remains a primary gateway into Central Europe from North American cities. Air Canada, United Airlines, USAirways, and Delta all fly to Munich, but Lufthansa is the primary carrier across the Atlantic to the Alps.

Air Jamaica Network, September 1972

A groovy brochure from a young Air Jamaica, boasting of its citrus-colored super DC-8 quadjet daily runs to sun-kissed Montego Bay from New York-JFK, Chicago via Nassau, and Toronto via [sunny] Philadelphia (the brochure says between the last two--not clear if such an itinerary could be purchased). All Caribbean-bound first class passengers enjoyed a shag and patent-leather stand-up bar-- an island party in the stratosphere.

The DC-9 evidently ran the daily to Miami, and the lone domestic route to the capital, Kingston. Cake and soft drinks, horseback riding and sport fishing, waterfalls and bass players--these were just a overview of the joys on offer in sunny Jamaica--but flying with Air Jamaica means the vacation of a lifetime begins the moment a passenger stepped on board. Services as far as Los Angeles and London were still a decade or more away.

CSA Czech Airlines: The North American Timetable, 1982

Still diving through the incredible collection of Flickr user caribb. Here is a late Iron-curtain era handbook of ČSA Ceskoslovenske Aeroline, Czechoslovakia's state carrier, as its quad-engined IL-62 superjets roared across the Atlantic on Thursdays for the more democratic destinations of Montreal's Mirabel airport in Canada, which turned south to New York's JFK. Twice a week, OK578 spewed exhaust southward to arrive the next day at the socialist-tropical paradise of Cuba. If those two operations weren't convenient enough, on Sunday a Cubana IL-62 made the Prague-Havana run.

Note that Y class only was provided. A connecting service to Toronto and New York via Air Canada is helpfully included.

The top table appears to offer a feeder service from Budapest, Milan and Paris into these intercontinental services.

Timetablist would like to thank caribb (Doug from Montreal) for generously allowing the reuse of these images under creative commons license terms.

Etihad Airways: African, European & North American Routes, 2011

Etihad is far behind its rival Emirates, especially in terms of African routes. It had fewer North American destinations (and has no A380s) although it has successfully served Chicago O'Hare non-stop with an A340-500 for more than a year. The airline also links Abu Dhabi with smaller cities like Geneva, Minsk, Kiev, Brussels, and Dublin.

Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky: The international non-stops, Winter/Spring 2005

Five Years ago, Cincinnati was connected with four European capitals daily: London (Gatwick), Paris, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt, all by Delta Air Lines, which once operated one its largest hubs from the banks of the Ohio River.  Pre-SkyTeam Partner airline Air France often landed from CDG itself. In addition, Delta landed in Northern Kentucky from Cancun, Nassau, Montreal, and Toronto.

Today, only the Paris connection remains, although Cincinnati continues to be painfully squeezed between Delta's massive hubs in Atlanta and Detroit, as well as Memphis, also under pressure to shrink, and Minneapolis (the latter three inherited from Northwest). Meanwhile, Delta launched seasonal service from Pittsburgh to Paris, which continues to operate in the summer season, usually with a B757.

JAT Worldwide, 1970-85

JAT has always been a Timetablist favorite, if only for its dedicated attempt to access the Yugoslavian-American diaspora of the upper Midwest, where it was for a time the most exotic weekly visitor to Detroit and Cleveland Hopkins, and adding to Balkan flavor of Chicago O'Hare.

Here we find a bright blue map set, from sometime in the early 1980s or perhaps earlier, prior to its broadening of Great Lakes destinations. Its overall reach is quite impressive, a global arch with Beograd as its keystone, which turns at Shannon to stretch to Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto and New York.

Looking east, the red line bends across Europe to play the role of what has to be one of the more perculiar Kangaroo carriers, with an axis spanning Ankara- Tehran- Karachi -Bombay-Madras-Singapore and terminating at that great Yugoslav enclave of Sydney.