KLM: Accra-Amsterdam, July 2012

A disappointing detail on what is otherwise a delightful flight: KLM 590, the nightly non-stop from Accra to Amsterdam, is onboard a brand-new A330-300, but offers the bland, geography-free in-flight map, above. Part of the joy of a trans-Saharan flight is looking out the window at the wastelands and marveling at the corners of Mali, Mauritania and Algeria that the plane is transversing. Not possible here.

Gambia Bird Network, October 2012

We interrupt this blog to bring you West Africa's newest airline: The delightfully sleek Gambia Bird, which, if its own press releases are to be believed, commenced operations today.

Backed by low-cost German carrier Germania Airways, Gambia Bird features A319 services from Banjul, from the 50-minute hop to Dakar to the long haul legs to London Gatwick and Barcelona. Lagos does not seem to be on the schedule quite yet, nor the non-stops between Freetown and London or Monrovia and Accra. But its current timetable does break with the norm and offer more direct non-stops, rather than interline services (the Banjul-Monrovia run does not stop in Freetown or Conakry, for instance).

There's nothing that Timetablist loves more than a new West African airline, and Gambia has been without its own flag-carrier since the disreputable demise of Slok Air in 2008, and stretching back to the proud days of Air Gambia and Gambia Airways.

Singapore Airlines: The A380 to Frankfurt, January 2012

Singapore Airlines announces its tricontinental luxury A380 service between Frankfurt and Singapore which launched on 16 January of this year. SIA was the launch operator of the superjumbo, and is currently one of ten airlines flying the A380.

China Eastern Airlines: Shanghai-Frankfurt-Hamburg, 2012

A blue-hued depiction of the route of China Eastern Airlines between Shanghai Pudong and Hamburg via Frankfurt, as shown on the China Eastern website, which, like most of the carriers of the People's Republic, is mostly in Chinese, even for a member of SkyTeam. Not many foreign carriers serve Hamburg, despite its size and wealth, but linking the two massive ocean ports via air must be imperative enough to warrant the once-weekly extension of MU219/220 to Hamburg, which started in August of 2011. Its not clear why the interface lists the random selection of destinations in Asia, Australia and Canada as it does at right.

Royal Brunei Airlines Network, 2011

Since it first started flight to London in 1990, Royal Brunei Airlines has offered something of an alternative to the traditional Kangaroo Route choices, with its links to several Australian cities (but not, apparently, Sydney) via the tiny Sultanate's capital, Bandar Seri Begawan, and Dubai to Heathrow Terminal 4. There are even links to five cities in the British Isles, courtesy of BMI, as shown in the cartouche at lower left. The airline serves ten regional cities as well, from Shanghai to Singapore to Surabaya. This item was found via the Daily Mail online, in some sort of promotion with department store John Lewis.

Qantas Routes, c.1955

A map for Qantas from about the same era as the previous post, showing the predominant Australian carrier with all its five-continent reach, from Victoria to Vancouver, Johannesburg to Japan. Similar to this post from last year, also showing the pre-jet era Qantas, yet in this map the airline had spanned the Pacific to San Francisco, a route which commenced in 1954, just five year before the arrival of its first B707s.

Australian National Airways Routes, c.1950

A DC-4 zooms across the dry expanse of the antipodean continent in this vintage route map of the long-gone Australian National Airways. The quad-motor Douglas aircraft only entered the fleet after World War II, and shortly before the airline's demise in a fiercely-competitive market. Although this pamphlet highlights the major national route, Sydney-Melbourne, in red, the airline stretches from Cairns in northern Queensland to Hobart in Tasmania and extends from Adelaide to Perth via the outback station of Kalgoorlie. The remnants of its operations were later folded into Ansett in the mid-1950s.

Air Pacific Network, 2004

Another colorful map from a South Pacific carrier, this Air Pacific, the state airline of Fiji, displays a fan of spectral ribbons across the vast ocean, from Vancouver and Tokyo to Canberra and Christchurch, all via Nadi, the international airport Vita Levu. Tokyo, Vancouver, Wellington and Canberra have all been cancelled: this map was during a very brief period when Air Pacific flew to the Australian capital, which currently enjoys no international services.

Qantas from Sydney to Dallas: The World's Longest Flight (In Coach)

In January 2012 the Wall Street Journal's Middle Seat column featured a special report on flying coach for over 15 hours nonstop between Sydney, Australia and Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas aboard Qantas. While perhaps not the longest existing flight in the world, especially in historical terms (Singapore's nonstop to New York was far longer), the article featured an interactive log of how the author passed the time--mostly watching inane television.

Air Rarotonga Route Map, 2009

This lovely and dynamic graphic is still available on Air Raro's website, although the page hasn't been updated since 2009. Perhaps nothing has changed in this island paradise, an idyllic archipelago whose atolls from Rarotonga to Pukapuka are strung together by the pastel-colored prop planes of its flag carrier. The long flight to Papeete is handled by Air Tahiti, as noted, while connections to New Zealand and elsewhere must be handled by other carriers.

Air Vanuatu Network, 2011

Following the previous post, this later, glossier map of Air Vanuatu shows a smaller airline, with no apparent service to Fiji or the Solomon Islands, but the same network to New Caledonia, New Zealand, and New South Wales. The flight from Espiritu Santo to Brisbane has endured. Auckland is for some reason misplaced at the center of the country.

Air Vanuatu Network, August 2009

The entire expanse of Air Vanuatu's reach, from the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and Fiji, as well as New Zealand and the main cities of Australia, the country's main economic patrons. This includes a nonstop from Espiritu Santo Island to Brisbane.

Polynesian Airlines Network, c.2001

A rainbow-colored route map for Polynesian Airlines from about ten years ago, via the wonderfully strange, half-dormant website, World of Islands. Its not explicitly clear what the dotted lines refer to, but perhaps Air Pacific or other carriers operated these intra-Antipode routes on Polynesian's behalf.

At the time, Polynesian, founded in 1959 and one of the dominant South Pacific carriers, ran a very prestigious Apia-Honolulu-Los Angeles service, which reportedly bankrupted the company. Sadly, today the airline is relegated to domestic service as Virgin Samoa (formerly Polynesian Blue) runs long-haul flights to Australia and New Zealand. The only service northwards is to Honolulu on Air Pacific, the Fijian carrier.

Scheduled Passenger Routes from Hawaii, 1971: West of the Dateline

Examining the left-hand side of the same map from the previous post, a State Department of Transportation map from 1971-2. There are many flights between Hawaii and Australia, connecting nonstop from Honolulu to Brisbane and Sydney, as well as Auckland, while connecting New Caledonia and Fiji along the way and with Melbourne as an onward destination. The  trans-Micronesia service is shown in special green, dipping down to Nauru, with a major west Pacific base at Guam, which connects onward to Manila, Hong Kong, and Taipei. Tokyo and Okinawa are served non-stop.

Its somewhat difficult to discern which routes certain airlines, listed above, served at the time, especially BOAC and VARIG; Pan Am likely served many of these flights.

Scheduled Passenger Routes from Hawaii, 1971: East of the Dateline

A fun artifact from the State Department of Transportation (of Hawaii, presumably) studying the transocean air links of the archipelago. Most flights are indeed from Honolulu. This first post tags the eastbound services to the US West Coast and Vancouver, to Alaska due north, and across to Mexico, as well as inter-Polynesian flights to Tahiti and Samoa. The flights to Acapulco in particular are interesting, as no long-haul flights exist from this fading resort town today.

The only drawback of this representation is it leads the reader to guess which of the airlines listed in box at upper left serve which routes. Some are easy to discern. Several others, such as Western Airlines, TWA, and UTA, no longer fly anywhere.

The next post will detail the westbound flights to Micronesia, Melanesia, Australia, and Asia.

Hawaiian Airlines Routes, 1990

Just three years after the last post, this next, much more muted feature from fabulous Departed Flights shows Hawaiian Airlines having dropped Anchorage and Portland, but otherwise expanded dramatically across the Pacific, reaching Australia and New Zealand while also adding a Polynesian fan of Tahiti and the Cook Islands, along with Guam in Micronesia. Sadly today, most of these exotic island destinations are gone, with the airline only resuming Sydney service and only next year returning to Auckland, and still serving Pago Pago and Papeete. 

Hawaiian Airlines Route Map, 1987

Yet another delight from Departed Flights, this wonderfully-vintage Hawaiian Airlines route map from 1987, showing the small airline bridging the Pacific from Anchorage to Apia, and interesting mix of ferrying West Coast vacationers to the islands, interlinking the archipelago state, and linking the tiny isles of Polynesia with Honolulu, the central Pacific metropolis. Note that most of the Hawaiian destinations are labeled by the islands, not the airports.

America West Airlines: Schedule from Honolulu, December 1991

A page from America West's late 1991 timetable, detailing the connections out of Honolulu, the available non-stops being via B747 to either Nagoya or Phoenix. It seems that the other mainland connection, to Las Vegas, would be discontinued in early 1992. Connections to West Coast destinations such as Oakland and Portland, as well as far distant New York (both JFK and Newark) as well as several Midwestern cities are shown also, with Moline, Illinois being farther away from Hawaii than Japan.

America West Airlines Network, December 1991

Another vintage gem from the now-deserted Departed Flights blog: America West Airlines System Route Map from December, 1991, at the extent of the airline's independence, with its Pony Express-styled typography but with a mature presence from Boston to Burbank and a single, exotic pan-Pacific hop from its Las Vegas hub and Phoenix fortress to Honolulu and on to Nagoya, Japan. Today, America West has adopted the styling of its take-over target USAirways, and does not fly to Asia.

Mohawk Airlines Network, August 1991

From the delightful Departed Flights blog, which is sadly itself departed and apparently defunct, is this rare route map of Mohawk Air Lines from August 1991. Even a decade after deregulation, its fascinating to see how regionally-limited some airlines were.

A crudely-drawn map of the northeastern United States, with a blunted Maryland and only partial Virginia and West Virginia, shows a system extending only from Boston to Buffalo. In between, short-hop connections between Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Albany, and Binghamton, connect to La Guardia, Hartford, and Boston-Logan. These upstate tier cities could only dream to have the hub status they once enjoyed here: most of these trips are now made by the New York Thruway, not via air.  Atlantic City lies outside Mohawk's orbit, a distant dream.

Special Thanks to the excellent Departed Flights blog for access to its collection.