Vintage Airline Timetables, an Archive of Airline Route Maps, Airline Print Ads, Airline Schedules, New Airline Service Announcements, Airport Departure Boards, and First Flight Covers of New Airline Flights, and a leading source of original documentation of the History of Commercial Airline Service.
More of Banjul: this might not look particularly relevant, but this is in fact the dinner menu on the Gatwick-Banjul-Monrovia flight from the evening of 10 April 1982. With typical BCal thoroughness, the folder including routing and aircraft information; sadly this is particular paper is not part of Timetablist's core collection, so further elaboration is not available here. It does however stand as an important document proving two of Timetablist's favorite topics: the erstwhile prominence of Robertsfield among European carriers, and the last few posts' celebrations of the similarly past glory of Banjul's international connections.
More history of the Cape Verde coast as global node. This particular envelope from December 6, 1941, celebrates Pan Am's first arrival in Bathurst, Gambia (today Banjul). More broadly, the deep, dynamic illustration shows a flying boat clipper which originates at Miami and reaches the equator via San Juan and Port of Spain, calling at Belem and Natal in Brazil, before crossing the ocean and reaching Bathurst. From there it appears to extend to Lagos and on to Leopoldville. As with the previous post, Dakar did not get the glory.
This is a new format for Timetablist: a cellphone camera shot of the departures board of Yoff International Airport in Dakar, Senegal (taken at the ungodly hour of 2:52am! Why are West African flights all in the middle of the night? Really, would someone please leave a comment explaining this...) 
A more colorful atlas-style polar projection showing SAS's routes from 2006, compared with its silver-and-clay color scheme from 2003 (yesterday's post). Its old territory of West Africa beckons from the bottom of the page, only Cairo is reached on the continent.
Scandinavian Airlines System's contemporary operations focus on two long-distance markets: Asia and the United States. The US side has increasingly been aligned with United Air Lines's feeder system from its hubs (in the 1980s the alliance was with Continental's base at Newark), as well as a reliance on ethno-cultural links to Scandinavian communities in the United States, such as the Upper Midwest. Chicago O'Hare's links to both Copenhagen and Stockholm can be understood in this context, as certainly Seattle should be seen, beyond the usual link between major advanced economies. 
Although monochrome and devoid of detail, this mail is another crisp example of the European first-day cover tradition. The first flight from Copenhagen to Abidjan's Port Bouet, on 6 June 1972, may have been non-stop as there is no routing information on the envelope other than upper-left text and the cancellation stamp, which both only list origin and destination. Its such a shame that the Scandinavian carrier has no routes to Africa to present.
Iberia's Western Hemisphere routes in early 2006 showing, to a fault, its reliance on American Airlines to compliment its transatlantic system, particularly the radiating spokes out of Miami and Chicago. Its surprising that Iberia does not have more US destinations: nothing on the west coast, no service to Washington. Service to Boston's Logan airport has commenced since this time. Its Latin American links are proficient, but not over-abundant. 
Iberia's eastward system looks slimmer than its 1988 operations, but still connects to Dakar, Lagos, Malabo and Johannesburg in sub-Saharan Africa. Aside from the dense array of Moroccan cities, including the Western Saharan capital of El Aaiun, Iberia is otherwise surprisingly spare on North African destinations: no Algerian or Tunisian cities, for instance.
Air Botswana is, by dint of its homeland's small population, a tiny airline with only regional aircraft. Its furthest destinations are Windhoek, Harare, Cape Town and Johannesburg, at least as of the 2006 advertisement shown here. But given how complimentary most reporting is of Botswana as Africa's little miracle, its surely a lovely carrier. Note that it seemingly has more routes out of Maun, the gateway to the Okovango Delta tourism region, and Johannesburg, than out of its capital, Gaborone, which is reportedly close enough to the Gauteng that driving is easier.
Antrak Air is an under-publicized regional carrier based in Accra, Ghana. This shows the domestic schedule shows the weekly departures to Tamale and Kumasi. Its only a shame that their route to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso isn't currently running.
UTA French Airlines was one of aviation's more unique carriers: from its eggplant colored airplanes to its roster of destinations-- if you saw one its widebodies, you knew your were someplace exotic (or maybe just in Paris). Its really a shame UTA didn't survive, its individual spirit has never been matched by any other intercontinental carrier since. One question on the advert: did it really serve Nouadhibou, Mauritania's secondary port and surely one of the most remote cities in the world, and not its capital, Nouakchott? Can't stop admiring the curious carrier; its a shame its reputation didn't survive the 1989 Bombing.
Its somewhat incredible to contemplate that in several decades ago, not one (Pan Am) but two (TWA) U.S. carriers departed New York for East Africa. It would take some research to determine just how long this route lasted, but it seems to have routed via Rome, Athens and Cairo variously, stopping next at Entebbe and then on to Nairobi and terminating at Dar Es Salaam.
25 March 1976 must have been quite a day at Roberts International Airport: likely the only time in Liberia's history that it was visited by a supersonic jet (although the craft was not unknown in West Africa, as Air France was known to run a Paris-Dakar-Rio de Janeiro service). Its not clear from this jubilant cover whether passengers were even on board, much less if any deplaned at Monrovia. From the red cancellation stamp, it suggests that it was a corporate test flight for the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC).
A typically colorful first day cover from KLM in 1960, although a bit dull (the woman with the basket on her head could easily represent any African destination) considering the significance of the Amsterdam-Accra flight. This route holds a particular importance for both countries: it can easily be forgotten that, although the Gold Coast was a British Crown Colony at independence in 1959, it was the Dutch that held the area for the longest period of time, and other than South Africa, Ghana is the closest to an African territory that the Netherlands ever had. The Dutch imprint is still with Ghana, most visibly at the high-end Golden Tulip hotel in the center of town (with another property in Kumasi) and the nearby Royal Netherlands Embassy, arguably the most gorgeous modern building in the country. The KLM flight also has particular importance in Ghana's gold exports; each KLM jet is reportedly loaded with bullion.
A page from this past summer's Brussels Airlines Spirit Magazine, showing its 14 African destinations, which it inherited several years ago from the estate of the old Sabena. Brussels Airlines is a curious carrier, a small, quiet airline in Europe, with no transatlantic routes at the time, but a dominant carrier to Africa, serving more cities on the continent then almost any other intercontinental operator, and the major connection between such cities as Kigali, Kinshasa and Monrovia to overseas destinations with its handful of A330s. The result is almost a feeling of an airline-within-an-airline, especially given Brussels Airlines's small fleet of regional aircraft spread out among the terminals at the half-empty Zaventem National Airport, with one end of terminal A, the so-called "T" gates, screened off from the rest of the departures hall by an extra passport control: this is one of the principal gateways between Europe and Africa.
Its not entirely clear what to make of this; its celebrating a route that began June 1973 from Cleveland to Seoul via Chicago, Anchorage and Tokyo. The question is, could one really board a Northwest Orient DC-10 at Cleveland Hopkins airport, and not deplane until reaching Kimpo? If so, this is a wonderful, overlooked triumph of Cleveland's aviation history. But it is also entirely likely that the service included a "change of plane" and was really just another connection through a hub. It is true that both United and Northwest used widebodies to connect to Cleveland; United used a DC-10 to shuttle Monday morning commuters from Hopkins to O'Hare up until the 1990s.
