Wednesday, February 22, 2012

KLM: Tracking Flights over Africa and the Middle East, November 2011

A screen shot from the evening of 11 November 2011, from KLM's delightful flight tracking utility from the airline's website, revealing some of the Dutch airline's unique destinations in the region.

Icons of a handful of jets, all making their way south of the Sahara from Schiphol, are mostly nearing their destinations: Flight to Accra is still on the Algeria-Mali border, while the thrice-weekly Flight #KL577 to Kano is still over Niger. As has been mentioned in previous posts, KLM is the last European airline to serve the northern Nigerian metropolis. Nearby, the nightly Flight #KL587 into Lagos is brushing over the northeasternmost section of Benin before its initial descent.

On the other side of Africa, Flight #KL567/569/571, which may have stopped in Arusha/Kilimanjaro airport, is on final approach to Dar Es Salaam, while the Flight KLM#535/537 from Kigali is already heading north back to Entebbe, a route which at the time of this viewing had just passed its one-year anniversary. The two non stops from Amsterdam to South Africa, to #KL597 Cape Town and #KL591 to Johannesburg, are over Namibia and Zambia, respectively. Amsterdam is the only European city besides London which is connected to Cape Town.

At the upper left, a trio of Gulf-bound Flying Dutchmen cluster over Kuwait on their way to either Dammam, Doha, Dubai or Abu Dhabi, or perhaps even Muscat. Whereas a number of international airlines used to serve King Fahd International in Dammam, KLM is one of the few that remains.


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