Cathay Pacific Routes, 1980

Cathay Pacific is a supermajor today, with important European and Transpacific networks, so it is easy to forget that in late Imperial Times, CX was hardly to be seen outside of Asia. At the time these red lines were marked on this map, the farthest from Kowloon Bay that Cathay reached was a single stretch to Bahrain and Dubai from a scissors-station in Bangkok.

It would be another ten years from the publication of this map that the triple-mint stripe would appear in Europe at the West Coast. Note the number of intermediate stops, such as Taipei and Singapore- intraregional networks seem more common in East Asia even to this day. The direct flight to Port Moresby is also an interesting inclusion