Air Namibia Schedule, Summer 2011

The complete schedule of Air Namibia published in its in-flight magazine, Flamingo, in the summer of 2011, starts with domestic routes on board is Embraer 135, extending to its regional routes to various Southern African capitals with A319 and B737 aircraft, which also serve more distant Accra, and finishing with its flagship Airbus A340 flights from Windhoek to Frankfurt. 

Air Namibia Network, October 2011

An indigo-violet map showing Air Namibia's major routes, most notable for its far stretches to Accra and Frankfurt, but also its important links to South Africa: Cape Town, Durban, and of course Johannesburg, but also to neighboring capitals Harare, Lusaka, Gaborone, and Luanda. Regional tourism centers, most notably Victoria Falls and Maun, gateway to Botswana's Okavango Delta, are also covered.

Namibian airports with international operations are included here, such as Walvis Bay's link to Cape Town (WVB); Mpacha Airport at Katima Mulilo in the Caprivi Strip (MPA); and Rundu Airport in the Kavango region (NDU). Ondongwa Airport (OND) is also shown, although with only its tiny connection to Windhoek.

Air Namibia: Windhoek-Accra Weekly Schedule, Autumn 2011

Air Namibia has in the last year wisely pursued a market opportunity between Western and Southern Africa by providing a daily connection between Accra and Windhoek, with onward service to Johannesburg and other destinations, competing head-on with South African Airways on the intra-African link. The airline has made a major marketing push in Accra to promote the route, producing helpful literature such as the timetable above and blanketing the city with billboards, such as the below:

Accra Kotoka Airport: Tuesday Evening Departures, November 2011

In the evening, most of the long-haul carriers return to their home bases from Accra's Kotoka International Airport, as this segment of the Tuesday schedule from November 2011 shows. These include the northerly, European carriers, such as KLM and British Airways, as well as the somewhat rarer Alitalia departure just prior to midnight, one the Italian carrier's few remaining sub-Saharan services.

Also here are more easterly-based airlines, such as Turkish (via Lagos), Egyptair, Emirates and MEA, the latter routing their Beirut service via Kano. There is also a southerly route on South African Airways which leaves for Johannesburg at 11PM.

Accra Kotoka Airport: Tuesday Midday Departures, November 2011

The middle of Tuesday last November at Accra's Kotoka International Airport shows several various West African connections, including ASKY to Lomé, Air Nigeria to Monrovia, Kenya Airways to Freetown (originating in Nairobi), Emirates to Abidjan (a continuation from Dubai), and United Air Lines to Lagos (having started in Washington). ASKY flies to Freetown and Banjul at mid-afternoon, after Egyptair's departure for Cairo.

Accra Kotoka Airport: Tuesday Morning Departures, November 2011

Tuesday morning at Accra's Kotoka International last November had some of the same regional routes: Abidjan, Lagos, and Abuja on Air Nigeria, Arik Air, and Air Ivoire, but also linked by MEA, Ethiopian, and Egyptair. A Royal Air Maroc flight runs to Casablanca and back. By mid-morning, two long-haul day flights get set to depart: a Delta B767 to New York JFK, and a somewhat unusual Virgin Atlantic A340 non-stop to London Heathrow, which arrives in the UK at 6pm.

There are several typos here, the most consequential is the departure at 0810, listed as AI 2002, which is surely wrong as there is no Air India service to Accra, much less on a B737 via Lagos.

Accra Kotoka Airport Monday Evening Departures, November 2011

Continuing from the previous post, the Monday evening departures table shows a host of intercontinental carriers leaving Accra for distant destinations in Europe and elsewhere. This includes both Kotoka's traditional standbys, KLM to Amsterdam and British Airways to London, as well as new-comers such as Emirates to Dubai at 5:30, Turkish Airlines to Istanbul, United Airlines to Washington Dulles, TAP to Lisbon, and Afriqiyah Airways to Tripoli.

Also seen here are southern hemispheric services, specifically South African Airways non-stop to Johannesburg and Air Namibia to Jo'berg via Windhoek. There are only a handful of regional departures to Lagos in the late afternoon as well as an Air Ivoire flight at 8PM to Lomé.

Accra Airport, Monday Departures, November 2011

The flight schedule for Accra's Kotoka International Airport from the Ghana Airports Authority for a typical Monday in November 2011 shows 20 departures in a 12 hour period. High-frequency routes for West Africa are those that depart more than once a day, and in this case hops from Accra to Abidjan, Abuja, Monrovia, and above all Lagos make the list, served by regional airlines such as Arik Air and Air Ivoire as well as global carriers looping the two cities into one flight schedule, such as United, Emirates and Egyptair, which turns around for Cairo in the early afternoon.

Other West African connections include Air Burkina to Ouagadougou, ASKY to Freetown, Lomé, and Banjul. At ten minutes to nine, a Virgin Atlantic A340 leaves for London Heathrow; a Delta B767-300 departs for New York JFK fifty minutes later.

The following post continues the analysis of this timetable. 

Accra Kotoka International Airport Departure Board, November 12, 2011

The midday line-up of flights out of Kotoka Airport in Accra, Ghana on Sunday, 12 November 2011.

The roster is mostly regional, with Air Nigeria departing for Monrovia (with a later link to Lagos), followed by ASKY quickly jumping to its main base at Lomé (also hopping to Abidjan several hours later). Kenya Airways, on a continuation of its Nairobi service, also flies to Robertsfield, Kotoka's third-busiest bridge, while Arik Air is the other airline to land at Lagos from Accra (the busiest route from Accra and in all of West Africa). Air Burkina has an evening flight northward to Ouagadougou.

The remaining flights stretch beyond the immediate subregion: Egyptair to Cairo and MEA's evening flight to Beirut are testament to the important commercial links to the Near East, while Emirates continuation of its Dubai-Accra service flows on to Abidjan at five minutes to 2PM.

At the noon hour, an Ethiopian Airlines departure for Addis Ababa is proceeded by United Airlines transatlantic run to Washington Dulles - the airline's first African destination, which started in 2010 and sadly is scheduled to end next month.

Ghana Airways: Düsseldorf-Accra and all of West Africa, c.1990

A cartoon DC-10 smiles from a German-language Ghana Airways sticker celebrating Ghana Airways service from Düsseldorf to Accra sometime around 1990. The state airline stretched from Westphalia to West Africa nearly until its demise, serving the burgeoning immigrant communities of the Rhine region as one of the airline's few European destinations (London Gatwick was consistently the other, which it sometimes flew to via Germany).

Ghana Airways Network, October 1966

Four years on the map featured in yesterday's post and Ghana Airways has indeed entered the jet era with its flagship VC-10 shown atop this schedule, whilst running routes from Accra to London, Zürich, Cairo and Beirut. Rome is also shown on the above network, but is unlabeled. The Soviet venture has been dropped, it seems, as Moscow and Prague are no longer shown, and the other north African destinations are likewise absent.

The West African run remains, as does the route to Ouagadougou, although not Bamako.  Kumasi is now shown. Additionally, a British United connection from Monrovia to London via the Canaries is shown in a dashed line.

Khartoum is also gone, but in its place are "proposed routes" stretching across the belt of Africa, from Lagos to Douala, Bangui, Entebbe, and Nairobi, splitting there to terminate at Dar Es Salaam and Mogadishu. Leopoldville is also linked in with this planned expansion. Whether these destinations were ever reached is unclear; a timetable from 1972 shows none of these central African cities.

This item has been reposted from the incredible website Timetable Images, as is from the collection of Bjorn Larsson. The Timetablist would like to thank Timetable Images and Mr. Larsson for generously allowing reposting. 

Ghana Airways: The External Services, November 1962

During the same time frame as yesterday's newspaper advert, boasting of a Second-generation jet service from Ghana Airways, the above map showed the extent of the airline's international network, or as it uniquely says here, its "External Services."

The route includes the classic West African littoral ply from Lagos to Dakar via Abidjan, Monrovia (Robertsfield), Freetown, Conakry, and Bathurst. Also included in West Africa is hops north to Ouagadougou and Bamako, the second of which interestingly continues north to Tunis, then Zürich followed by Prague, and finally ending at Moscow. This was the era when President Kwame Nkrumah was courting Eastern overtures as well as Western in the immediate post-independence period. This triangulation would manifest itself most visibly at Ghana Airways, which received a handful of Illyushin Il-18s, as can be seen at lower left underneath the Dougla DC-3s and in adjacent corners from its other fleet types, the British Vickers Viscount and Bristol Brittania. The Soviet props were employed only for Ghana Airway's intra-African routes, such as the stretches to Khartoum and Cairo which then went on to Beirut on a weekly basis.

But Ghana's back was not turned away from its colonial parent, as can be seen from the air company's dual routes to London, one via Tripoli and Rome, the other direct non-stop, the longest route for the company at the time.

This item has been reposted from the incredible website Timetable Images, as is from the collection of Bjorn Larsson. The Timetablist would like to thank Timetable Images and Mr. Larsson for generously allowing reposting. 

Ghana Airways Chooses the VC-10, c.1962

A wonderful vintage newspaper advertisement from some time in the early 1960s, as Ghana Airways had announced their intention to purchase three Vickers Aircraft VC-10s. Note that the advert states "built by British Aircraft Corporation" as Vickers was coming into a government-pressured nationalization scheme to form BAC. The tagline, "projecting the Clean-wing shape of the future," underscores the delightful optimism of the announcement.

The 2-page spread above is dominated by the broad airliner zooming across the sheet, presumably on a future flight between London Heathrow and Accra Kotoka. 

BOAC: Addis Ababa to London, January 1973

The holder of this envelope can almost hear the roar of BOAC's super VC-10s quad engines as the airliner touches down for the first time at Bole Airport in early January1973. The gorgeous illustration, set at a dynamic perspective, dominates this stately and information-backed first flight cover.

BOAC's classic, dashing speed bird emblem appears several times, most notably at the header of the paragraph-long Official Flight Endorsement which provides exacting detail on the itinerary of this piece of paper from Heathrow to Addis Ababa and back, although it is elsewhere, at far right, that the intermediate stops: Nicosia and Cairo, the latter categorized, curiously, as "unscheduled."

More space, if not heavier ink, is given over to the regal Lion of Judah, symbol of the Ethiopian monarch and not dissimilar from Queen Elizabeth's heraldic menagerie.

Air India: Bombay-Kuwait, October 1960

Air India's mascot, the Maharaja, meets a Sheikh and presents him a flower on the occasion of Air India's inaugural Bombay-Kuwait service in October 1960. No information about intermediate stops or aircraft is included.

Air India: Entebbe-Bombay, October 1968

Returning back from Bombay to East Africa on nearly the same day, this envelope celebrates the launch of service from India to Uganda in October 1968, with a Boeing 707. Its not clear whether this is the same flight as that which landed at Addis Ababa, or a dedicated service.

The kindergarten-crayon, juice-box colored illustration is a curious choice, with a sort of bizarre parade of the Maharaja riding a leopard, either chasing or marching alongside a slender, bejeweled but barefoot woman, balancing a bunch of green bananas on her bun. On the first envelope, this at least fits the gorgeous colors of the tropical bird on the Ugandan stamp.

Air India: Addis Ababa-Bombay, October 1968

A first-flight cover for Air India from Addis Ababa to Bombay on 27 October 1968, which the cancellation stamp states was flown by a Boeing 707, without information on any intermediate stops. Compare the cartoonish Maharaja's donkey with the Ethiopian Stamp's stately stallions of the orthodox icons.

Ethiopian Airlines: The Wonderland Route to Kenya, c.1955

In the colonial era, when only Ethiopia was not under European control, Ethiopian Airlines flew its DC-6s on the "Wonderland Route" between Addis Ababa and Nairobi in the Kenya Colony. Also advertised are Aden, Djibouti, Egypt (presumably Cairo), Sudan (surely Khartoum), Eritrea (likely Asmara), Pakistan (possibly Karachi), Saudi Arabia and "East Africa." Shown on the cover of this brochure is an office block labeled "America House" which is presumably Ethiopian's office in pre-independence Nairobi. Exact date of the item is unknown.

Ethiopian Airlines Network, c.1972

Via this website, it is a colorful brochure espousing the wonders of the Hidden Empire, including this straightforward network map of the flag carrier. Ethiopian then reached 18 international destinations in Europe, Asia and spanning the African continent from Asmara to Abidjan and Dar Es Salaam to Douala.

The domestic map shows an enormous coverage within the diverse country, with more than 40 destinations from the Red Sea to the Blue Nile, most served at the time with DC-3 aircraft-- as the brochure states, the flagship B707s, shown in the above image on the apron at Addis Ababa Bole Airport, were reserved for the intercontinental services to Delhi and Rome.

Ethiopian Airlines Network, c.1960

Appearing almost like the fuzzy felt of a drinks coaster, this map of Ethiopian Airlines mid-century network is a warm and wonderful scene, showing the African continent between a green and red band, like the imperial flag of Ethiopia itself, with the lion of Judah in the southern Atlantic at the lower left of the graphic.

A main North-South route runs between Nairobi and Cairo. A lateral route links Monrovia via Accra and Lagos. Presumably, the two lines angling down the cone of Southern Africa terminate at Johannesburg, but this is not specified, and neither is the significance of the thin lines versus the thick red bolts, which quite curiously cross not at Addis Ababa but at Khartoum. The Monrovia-Conakry-Dakar portion is also a striped hash line, perhaps suggesting that this trunk was not underway but was a future intention. Timbuktu is shown but seemingly not part of the network.

Above the Mediterranean, a rather random assortment of gateways are served: Lisbon, Athens, Frankfurt and Beirut. Aden is linked to Asmara, with promises of more of Asia off to the right of the map. A tiny arrow of the coast of Cap Vert suggests trans-Atlantic connections to the Americas.