Sabena: First flight from Conakry to Brussels

Although similar first-day covers announcing mid-century Sabena services to West Africa have been featured from the earliest days of Timetablist, this particular item hasn't been posted before: Sabena's 1959 service from Conakry to Brussels, with a special envelope featuring the famous Hôtel de Ville next to a West African mask, with the Boeing Jet Intercontinental. An alarming Guinean serpent stamp occupies the upper right.

Sabena: First Flight Brussels-Elizabethville, May 1953

An historic gem showing the Brussels-Rome-Athens-Cairo-Entebbe-Stanleyville-Elizabethville route's launch in May 1953, which was noted on Sabena's route map earlier this week without the Ugandan stop. The envelope, stamped at Ciampino Airport in Italy, was only posted as far as Lake Victoria's shores, in British East Africa.

Korongo Weekly Flight Schedule, 2013

Switching back to Korongo, whose weekly timetable from last year shows just how small the fledgling airline's operations truly are: only one, at most two, flights per day, with the most frequent operation being a near-daily Lubumbashi-Kinshasa service, which stops in Mbuji-Mayi on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Sundays. Service to Johannesburg is also thrice weekly.

Congo par Sabena, 1954

A domestic route map of sixty years ago looks much more impressive than the meagre network of Korongo today. Sabena offered services to no less than thirty airports in the vast Belgian colony, with what looks to be busy stations not only at the capital Leopoldville, and the principal regional administrative outposts at Elizabethville and Stanleyville, but throughout the interior of the enormous territory.

There were more than half a dozen routes via various way stations to the metropole in Brussels, including Tripoli, Casablanca, and Rome; all the routes from the capital connected at Kano, which must have been quite an operation in its own right.

In addition, regional African routes spanned the territorial border in all directions: from Leopoldville to Portuguese Luanda and Johannesburg, which also had a link to Elizabethville; from Albertville to Dar Es Salaam, from Libenge to Bangui, in French Equatorial Africa. Not especially the route to Entebbe and Nairobi, especially how Kigali lies within the realm of Belgian Central Africa at this time.

Korongo Promotion: Lubumbashi to Kinshasa and return, 2014

While the Democratic Republic of Congo may have among the lowest internet penetration rates in the world, Korongo Airlines nonetheless proceeds with a web marketing campaign as most of its customers are international mining executives, even in the case of its mainline domestic route between two of DRC's most important cities: the national capital, Kinshasa, and the capital of Katanga province, Lubumbashi. A deal priced in US Dollars.

Korongo Airlines Route Map, 2013-14

Still today, Belgian's primary commercial airline is greatly involved in the aviation market of the Congo. Here is a recent route map of Korongo Airlines, the Congolese subsidiary of Brussels Airlines, which has been featured previously here. 

The airline has slowly been expanding from southeastern Katanga province to the capital Kinshasa, where the dotted line SN flights reach Brussels almost daily. A connection to Johannesburg from Lubumbashi is especially convenient for mining executives; more recent routes now link Mbuji-Mayi and the secondary Katangan city of Kolwezi, one of the most active center for Cobalt mining in the world.

Sabena Network: c.1955

Post-war, pre-jet age Sabena still had an impressive reach, with a dense network in Europe spinning out from the low countries northward to Oslo and Stockholm and east to Prague and Vienna. A single westward push stopped at Shannon before destinations unspecified in North America.

Southward, planes reached the Mediterranean at Nice, and stretched further down to Lisbon where a vague connection to South America is suggested. More articulated is the operation at Rome, with planes splitting off for North Africa,  the first crossing the Sahara to stop at Kano before finally reaching the vast Belgian Congo at Leopoldville. A non-stop from Brussels reached into the upper reaches of the Congo to terminate at Elisabethville and Stanleyville, and a single lined continued all the way down to Johannesburg.

In the east, flights criss-crossed at Athens, only reaching Tel Aviv in the Near East, with another flight to Cairo, which turned down to also reach the eastern cities of the colony.

Sabena: The African Network, 1973

Continuing from the previous post, but focussing on Africa: Belgium has a particular, and outsized, colonial history in Africa, the 20th century era of which is intimately intertwined with the corporate history of Sabena. Here, near the height of the Belgian Airlines extent, the flag carrier flew to fifteen cities south of the Sahara. 

In west Africa, flights from Zaventem National Airport reached Dakar, Conakry, Abidjan, Niamey, Kano and Douala, with interlinking onward service to Monrovia and Lagos. Further into Central Africa lay Kinshasa, surely Sabena's most important African destination, linked from Niamey, Douala in Africa and Brussels and Athens in Europe. It is notable that no other Congolese city was served. 

Athens served as a supra-Mediterranean station for flights to East Africa: Nairobi and Entebbe connected non-stop from Greece, as did an ultra-long haul to Johannesburg. All three were also served non-stop from the home base. Interestingly, Uganda's main airport was also directly connected to Vienna. Kigali and Bujumbura, the capitals of Belgium's other central African former colonies, were only served from Nairobi, with Dar Es Salaam also linked in. 

Special thanks again to Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal) for allowing reuse under creative commons licensing. 

Sabena: Belgian World Airlines, 1973

Continuing with the vintage global route maps of European airlines from Flickr user Caribb's incredible collection, this (unfortunately somewhat blurry) photo shows Sabena's system in its “Belgian World Airlines” prime (compare to “Italy's World Airline” in the previous posts).

Five continents are linked, which is more than today's Brussels Airlines can boast, as that airline has only recently reached New York and Washington, but as with today's successor, the flag carrier of Belgium was mostly concerned with flights within Europe and Africa. As with this week's Alitalia posts, the latter African flights will be examined in detail in a subsequent post.

For now, this pink-and-grey sub polar projection shows just a few routes to Asia and the Americas, interspersed with far too much detail of "other airlines" connecting services, which overall makes Sabena's network look much more comprehensive and makes the map much too complicated to read easily.

In North America, only New York and Montreal are served, with the latter flight continuing on to Mexico City and terminating, quite unusually, at Guatemala City. Late-terminal Sabena would serve a number of U.S. cities from Boston to Miami in the 1990s before its ignominious 2001 demise.

Further into Latin America, the South American cone is connected on a Brussels-Dakar-Buenos Aires-Santiago service, which, while definitely not the only Dakar-South America operation in aviation history, may be one of the few situations in situation that West Africa had a scheduled link with Argentina, as most such flights link to Brazil.

Looking east, Sabena maintained sizable bases in both Vienna and Athens, with flights from both cities non-stop to East and Southern Africa as well as the Near East, such as Nicosia. Moving across the Asian landmass, flights first stopped in Tehran, then Bombay, Bangkok and Singapore were all interconnected, before the network curved up through Manila to reach Tokyo, from whence Sabena curved back over the pole to return to Brussels via Anchorage, Alaska.

The extensive African network will be detailed in the following post.

Special thanks, as always, to Flickr user Caribb (Doug from Montreal) for the generous creative commons licensing which permits reposting of his collection. 

Alitalia Route Map, 1977

It's been a while since we've taken advantage of the generosity of Flickr user Caribb (Doug from Montreal)'s creative commons allowance to post one of his photos documenting his collection of vintage airline memorabilia, but given the previous post, this 1977 Alitalia route map seems perfectly appropriate for this week.

In barely half a decade of the oil crisis 1970s, Italy's World Airline had already begun to greatly diminish its global reach; on nearly every continent, there are fewer destinations than in 1973. Only four cities remain in South America; Detroit has been dropped, but Philadelphia still remains; the Sydney-Melbourne service still exists but the Italian Kangaroo Route is now only a Rome-Bombay-Singapore option. Manila, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur are already lost.

Focussing on Africa, a non-stop to Luanda has actually been added since '73, but at the expense of Douala, Entebbe, and even Asmara, the Italian art-deco capital of East Africa. The Addis-Mogadishu service still exists, as does the Milan-Dakar-Buenos Aires service. Dar Es Salaam is now an offshoot of one of the Nairobi flights, one of which continues to Lusaka, another to Johannesburg, and lastly one still crosses into the Indian Ocean to Antananarivo and Mauritius.

Special thanks again to Doug from Montreal, Flickr user Caribb's allowance to repost this item under creative commons license. 

Alitalia: The African Routes & Schedules, 1973.

A detail of the previous post, originally put up at Airline Memorabilia, showing the astonishing array of African routes operated by Alitalia forty-one years ago.

The jagged cartography reveals a busy system, with almost all flights were out of Rome, although the second line to Dakar links directly to Milan, which continued on to South America. The rest of West Africa is well served by individual flights to Abidjan, Accra, and Lagos, with an onward connection to Douala. Airline Memorabilia scanned in the full schedule, which shows a quad-jet fleet of DC-8s, B707s and even VC-10s humming across the Sahara to seventeen cities.

East Africa was even more thoroughly interconnected, with four routes from Rome, including the curious Athens-Entebbe-Lusaka; two which covered the colonial connections to the Horn of Africa: Jeddah-Asmara-Addis Ababa and Khartoum-Addis Ababa-Mogadishu, and finally a plunging trans-Indian Ocean route: Nairobi-Dar Es Salaam-Antananarivo-Mauritius. In the schedule below, a footnote helpfully details that connections are available at Dar to/from the Comores Islands.

The cone of Africa was by comparison only lightly linked, with a Nairobi-Johannesburg and a Kinshasa-Johannesburg route. The third link to Jo'berg, a long-haul nonstop from Fiumicino.

Of all these cities, Alitalia only serves Accra and Lagos today.

Alitalia: The Intercontinental Network, 1973

Another historic relic from Airline Memorabilia, a newsprint amp arrayed with the bright-green lines of the great Italian flag carrier of 1973. Truly "Italy's World Airline."

Unlike today, Alitalia of forty years ago was a six-continent global behemoth, with service to seven North American cities, including those like Detroit and Philadelphia that it no longer serves. Even Washington, D.C. is no longer a destination, and service to Chicago is seasonal. A further seven Latin American cities are shown, of which Lima, Caracas, Montevideo and Santiago have since been curtailed.

Somewhat Amazingly, the airline flew a wide band of routes across southern Asia to deepest Antipodea, with a twisting array of Kangaroo routes reaching both Sydney and Melbourne via Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Singapore, and/or Bangkok, with onward service also to Hong Kong. Southeast Asia was itself reached via Karachi, Bombay, and Delhi. Exactly zero of these cities see the Italian airline today; the only Asian destination east of Iran is Tokyo.

What is perhaps even more noticeable, front-and-center of this polar projection, is the extensive African network, showering down from both Rome and Milan. A closer examination of these will be the subject of the next post.

Special Thanks as always to Airline Memorabilia for the use of the image. 

Ethiopian Airlines: Now Flying to Niamey Four Times Weekly, November 2013

Ethiopian Airlines leads the pack of pan-continental African airlines, a highly-competitive field which includes South African and Kenya Airways (and which faces increasingly stiff challenges from Emirates in particular). Niger's capital, Niamey, was one of the few West African capitals that Ethiopian didn't already serve; this was rectified last November with the introduction of four weekly flights, although not using one of the airline's sleek new Dreamliners as shown in this advert. ET937 does however use a respectably large B757 for the transcontinental service, which continues on to neighboring Ouagadougou, as does a number of other connections such as Air France and Turkish.

Africa World Airlines: Flying to Lagos Twice Daily, 2014

Another online advert from Africa World Airlines, showing a very reasonable fare on its twice-daily service along one of West Africa's busiest international routes: the Accra-Lagos air bridge.

Africa World Airlines Fly In Style: More Flights for your Travel Convenience, 2014

Aero Contractors is not the only West African airline that is busy expanding. Accra-based Africa World Airlines, a venture backed by China's Hainan Airlines, has, despite its name, been mainly flying domestically within Ghana for most of its few years of existence. More recently, it has at least become an international carrier, with several flights to Lagos and lately a new route to Abuja, although the airline is far from any sort of global prominence that its "World" name ambitiously implies, it at least is slowly evolving into a regional player, operating on what is believed to be West and Central Africa's busiest trans-border air routes.

Aero Contractors: More Routes Now Available, April 2014.

A final Aero Contractors post, from the airline's website, and following on the two previous posts featuring the resurging airline's recent web adverts: this features both a schedule table on routes between Abuja and Kano and return, and Abuja-Asaba-Lagos and return, before a final roundtrip to Kano to end the day at 8:30pm.

To the right, behind the undercroft image of the Aero B737, is a somewhat curious map against a blue sky: seemingly upside-down, with Abuja below Lagos and Asaba, in Delta State, at far left, it also shows Kano between Lagos and Abuja, when it is far to the north.

Aero Contractors: Affordable Flights on All Routes Now, March 2014

Continuing with coverage of Aero's recent splash on the web is the active sidebar advert, with an imposed photo of one of the airline's B737-400s over their curious "AWOOF" tagline. Against the bright orange, it looks too much akin to a Clemson Football banner than a promotion for a Nigerian domestic route (perhaps a member of the family is a Tiger).

Branding questions aside, Aero's affordable presence (a 10,000Naira ticket is barely $61) in the market helps keep down prices of the dominant Arik, as the older yet less successful Aero reaches to Calabar, Benin City, Enugu, Kano, Warri and of course Abuja, among others.

Aero Contractors: Resumption of twice-daily Lagos-Warri flights, February 2014

Although Arik Air dominates internal and external aviation in Nigeria, it is not the only airline. Here is a recent web banner advert from the historic yet struggling Aero Contractors, which more recently has been styled simply as Aero, announcing the resumption from Lagos to Warri's Osubi Airport.

The carrier's exceedingly bland tail markings and generic name can't be helping with its reputation in the market, although the airline still reaches Accra and Douala, it was spread farther, such as to Monrovia, it currently seems to be rebuilding its domestic network first, having only just resumed flying from last year.

Arik Air: the domestic destinations, c.2013

A detail from the previous post, showing Arik Air's domestic destinations: twenty cities across Nigeria, from Calabar to Katsina, in addition to the two hubs of Abuja and Lagos. Presumably the network is nearly identical to what has been featured before on the Timetablist, but has never been presented in the lipstick lustre of this ticket office display banner.

Arik Air: the international destinations, c.2013

A floor display banner of a bright pomegranate shade, standing in a West African ticket office, shows the rather-recent reach of Arik Air, the de-facto flag carrier of Nigeria. Previous Timetablist posts have shown a similar extent, from its 20-odd domestic destinations (detailed in the next post)and impressive West-African network to both Anglophone and Francophone cities, to the prestigious, premier routes of Johannesburg, and most especially the wet-lease intercontinental operations to New York and London.

The lone city that doesn't fit into these three categories is Luanda, a twice-weekly regional jet route that was nearly axed earlier this year. Unlike other Arik maps, this fails to detail actual route links; only one single meridian line passes through the headquarters at Lagos, while a second arc seems to indicate the edge of the earth, beyond which lie New York and London.

ASKY Airlines Network, March/April 2014 (Western Portion)

A continuation of the previous post, looking westward from Lomé, ASKY competes on the regular routes between Abidjan, Bamako, Ouagadougou, Dakar, and Conakry, while also offering stand-alone services such as the very rare Monrovia (Spriggs Payne)-Bissau service, which unfortunately was realigned to link to Conakry, one of a number of route realignments announced shortly after this issue of the magazine came out.

Speaking of Lusophone links, as with the previous post, the map disproportionately displays the distant destinations of mother-carrier Ethiopian Airlines, here advertising the relatively new Lomé-Rio de Janeiro/São Paulo services. Unfortunately, the Rio portion of this operation was unsuccessful, even in the midst of the World Cup and the imminent Olympics, Ethiopian dropped Galeão airport from its Brazilian service less than a month after this publication.

ASKY Airlines Network: March/April 2014 (Eastern portion)

A double-page spread at the back of ASKY Airlines' in-flight magazine from earlier this year: while the airline's primary hub is in Lomé and its strongest presence is across the west coast, the carrier is firmly established into the Congo basin, stretching as far south as Brazzaville, Pointe-Noire and Kinshasa. There is actually quite an operation out of Libreville, it seems, with links to Lagos and what is apparently the only connection to Yaoundé (in a now-typical network model; few ASKY destinations are linked to only one other city). 

The sole connection to Bangui appears to be Douala, which is partially plunged into the spine of the magazine, as is Abuja, which seems to connect up to N'Djamena, the airline's northeasternmost city, aside from the shamrock-green codeshare flight to the superhub of its parent company, Ethiopian: Addis Ababa appears on the map at upper right, somewhere in distant Chad, if the map were to scale. 

The next post features the western portion of the map. 

Air France: Paris-Douala-Brazzaville, September 1960

Riding the Gulf-of-Guinea gust of yesterday's post, we begin July with a September-stamped envelope: the announcement by Air France of its upgrading of the Paris-Douala-Brazzaville flight to a brand-new Boeing 707. The celebrated aircraft is gracefully championed in an elongated graphic element at top left, with the multisyllablic INTERCONTINENTAL linking “Boeing” and “Air France.”

In more recent years, Air France has served each city non-stop from CDG with B777s and A330s. Several other African airlines link Brazzaville with Douala.