Qatar Airways Worldwide Network, 2011. Detail # 1: The Gulf Region & Western Hemisphere

Continuing from the last post, here is the first in a series of posts about Qatar Airways from back in 2011, when it began on to nip at the heels of super-rival Emirates, chasing that megacarrier to all corners of the globe in the formative decades of the ME3. 

Origin & destination traffic is not nearly as important as making Doha a global megahub like Dubai, even before the state-of-the-art Hamad International Airport even opened. Hence, early extension all the way to Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo, as well as a fledgling operation to the four United States gateways, with Chicago in bright green, either as a cargo destination or in anticipation of its 2012 announcement of its new thrice-weekly passenger service which began in November 2013. These all connect with Qatar's regional, "Intra-Gulf" network—a triangle of cities between Kuwait, Muscat and Jeddah.

While only showing 14 cities on 3 continents on this page, dozens of other dots sprout across North America—presumably code-share connections although the map does not bother to explain.

Stockholm Arlanda Arrivals Board, May 2017

Staying in Scandinavia, the display screens at Stockholm's Arlanda Airport showing the bank of mid-morning arrivals in May 2017. Note the long-delayed flight from Thessaloniki meant to land the night before and still not showing up til mid-afternoon, that starts off the roster up top.

The Baltic region is heavily represented, naturally, and a handful of the airports shown here, mainly domestic operations within Sweden, make their Timetablist debut with this post: Åre Östersund, Luleå, Skellefteå, Turku in Finland, Umeå, Vaasa (also in Finland), and Visby. 

Longer-haul services, the handful not flown by SAS, are also landing around this time, including Turkish Airlines from Istanbul and Qatar Airways from Doha. The most distant arrival is SK940 landing from Los Angeles. 
 

Icelandair: Your way to Norway, 2011

Continuing to look at Icelandic air carriers in the 21st century, here is a magazine advert for Icelandair, specifically highlighting the airline's service to four Norwegian airports: Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, and Trondheim. The top of the page lists, in no particular order, Icelandair's 19 other European destinations from Glasgow to Alicante. That number has today nearly doubled above 35 cities, counting a number of seasonal services. 

Wow Air Network, 2015

 Continuing the wake for PLAY, here we see the fullest extent of its predecessor, the Barney-purple world of WOW Air. Thinner than either its successor or its flag-carrier rival, Icelandair, with only 2 routes across the Atlantic, to Boston and Washington-Dulles. Like the other two, familiar outstations include Tenerife, Salzburg, and Warsaw, while WOW's unique reach included Lyon and Vilnius. 

Farewell to Icelandic PLAY Airlines, 2025

 

A billboard at Keflavík Airport, advertising the route system of ultra-low-cost airline PLAY as it appeared in September 2024. Heavy on continental Europe, with significant overlap of its flag-carrier rival Icelandair to Span and Scandinavia, but with a handful of unique outstations including Athens, Bologna, Lisbon, Liverpool, Porto, and Venice. 

The service to "New York" was actually to Stewart International Airport in Newburgh some 60 miles north of what most people consider the destination "New York" to be; likewise the flight to "Toronto" was actually to John C. Monro Airport in Hamilton, Ontario—not the better known hubs served by Icelandair (both of these smaller airports making their Timetablist debut with this post). The Canadian operation ended in the Spring of 2025 as PLAY liquidated its transatlantic operations. 

Whatever the commercial attempts undertaken to differentiate itself, PLAY went the way of purple predecessor WOW Air and is no longer with us. 

Uganda Airlines: Current and Future Routes, 2025

Although of the same name as the flag carrier featured in yesterday's post, Uganda Airlines of the 21st century is a new government venture, founded in 2018 and with first flights launched in August 2019.

The state enterprise received a pair of ultramodern A330-800s in December of 2020, which allowed the airline to spread its wings to Dubai and Mumbai. The first route faces stiff competition from both an Emirates B777 and flyDubai. The widebodies are also used on more medium routes such as its only West African operation: Entebbe-Abuja-Lagos-Entebbe. 

The above pair of maps, from the airline's website, are somewhat curious graphics. The top image is labeled as showing Uganda Airline's existing destinations, while clicking the "View Planned Routes" button brings up the second image below. 

Although the geographically proficient can easily decipher the destination dots, it is strange that they are not labeled automatically. Even more incongruously, Uganda's ambition to reach London has already been realized, as there is a multi-week service to Gatwick with the A330s, which began in May this year. The website has simply not been updated. 

This prestigious long-haul joins the other showcase routes, and the regional network that includes Nairobi, Mombasa, Mogadishu, Dar Es Salaam, Zanzibar, Juba, and Kinshasa, as well as the important southern African route to Johannesburg. These links are run with the airline's CRJ regional jets, which is perhaps surprising for Johannesburg especially, that it doesn't see the widebodies. More recently, a 9-year old Danish-registered A320 joined the fleet, and makes appearances on the South Africa route. 

The future route map is more accurate in that Jeddah, Guangzhou, Lusaka and Harare have not yet been realized. Note that neither map features Abuja, either. 
 

Uganda Airlines: Route Map & Timetable, mid-1986

 

A classic handy pocket guide to the operations of Uganda Airlines, which at the height of its glory provided a tri-continental operation from its hub at Entebbe its (single?) 707-320B roared out of equatorial Africa each day. 

The schedule reveals that the quadjet originated in Nairobi on Wednesday, bound for Cologne-Bonn Airport then London Gatwick; on Thursday a noon departure stopped in Rome and then to London, while the Sunday service was Nairobi-Entebbe again and then non-stop to Sussex. 

Uganda Airlines was a strikingly early adopter of Dubai as an extra-continental destination, in the mid-1980s the emirate was decades away from emerging as the regional superhub and its own hometown airline was just celebrating its first birthday at the date of this publication. Nonetheless the Ugandan state carrier redirected its Boeing to southwest Asia, with a Nairobi-Entebbe-Dubai service on Monday and a nonstop on Friday, both staying on the desert tarmac overnight and returning on Tuesday and Saturday morning.  

The cover route map promises onward connections to the Americas from London and "connect Far East" from Dubai.