Aeromexico: The Monterrey Hub, December 2015

A third map from Aeromexico's inflight magazine, focusing on the airline's secondary hub at the northern economic powerhouse of Monterrey, just south of the Texas border. Long a manufacturing hub, Monterrey has boomed in the NAFTA era with its convenient position to the United States. Aeromexico's operations reflect that, with two routes over the Rio Grande to San Antonio and Houston, and longer connections to Atlanta, Miami, and New York, as well as Detroit—an automaker's route. Las Vegas and Los Angeles are the only other transborder flights, other than the long route to Tokyo, which as discussed in the previous post was discontinued. 

The internal flights are clustered together on this cartographic projection, with Chihuahua almost as far away as Atlanta and Tijuana just in front of "Tokio." A number of other Mexican cities make their Timetablist debut with this post, including Tampico, Culiac, Puerto Vallarta, and Aguascalientes. Many of these services have been cut back as Mexico's many low-cost carriers, particularly Ryanair's Mexican venture VivaAerobus and Volaris have come to dominate the domestic airspace. Volaris now carries the largest share of domestic passengers in the country. 

Air Peace: Lago-Accra Daily, February 2017

Accra has become established as perhaps the principal aviation cross-roads of West Africa, with the appearance of such unusual carriers as Cronos and CEIBA Intercontinental, as referenced in posts from earlier this month. Even more central to its position in the region is the importance of flights to Nigeria, most especially the critical Accra-Lagos air bridge, the busiest air corridor in all of West and Central Africa (although still minuscule in comparison to other famous shuttle routes such as São Paulo-Rio, Boston-New York-Washington, or Madrid-Barcelona, etc. 

The Timetablist has repeatedly featured the tragic circumstance of the short-lived Nigerian Air Carrier, be it the long-lost Nigeria Airways itself, or its series of successors, most famously in the last decade the Virgin Nigeria-Air Nigeria saga, which is now repeated with near-exact trajectory by the once-proud and now much-diminished Arik Air; it would be shocking if not so repetitive. 

In place of these companies now comes the latest and most-curious generation, which will be the subject of The Timetablist for the remainder of the month. These airlines are universally unusual and unreassuring in their appearance and appellation, all the moreso for their short lifespan. 

This particular transporter, named Air Peace, was established in 2013 and premiers in The Timetablist here for the first time. The company heightened its profile in February of this year by the introduction of a daily Lagos-Accra return schedule, performed by one the airline's various B737s—whether purchased or leased, the 733s and 735s are all of about 1997 vintage, which at least accords with the anachronistic paint scheme. 

Comfort is not further provided in this announcement, as while it is all well to feature the airline's other destinations, all domestic, the Coming Soon section surely invites only ridicule, or else Air Peace is on an expansion plan of historic efforts. Abidjan, Dakar, Douala and Niamey are reasonable achievable; London, Dubai, and Johannesburg certainly less-so, although Arik, and Virgin Nigeria in an earlier age, made similar plans. However, Atlanta, Mumbai, and the expansion simply referred to as 'China' seem to perhaps be more likely to require "more long wait."

Qatar Airways Route Network, November 2016: North America

As with other continents and corners of the globe, Qatar Airways has differentiated itself from its Gulf rival Emirates but reaching cities not served by the Dubai-based megacarrier. Of the 11 North American destinations, four of them: Montreal, Miami, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, are not served by Emirates. Philadelphia and Miami can be explained primary due to Qatar's partnership with American Airlines through the oneWorld alliance, although this is increasingly under strain.

Qatar just celebrated 5 years in Montreal, which sees carriers from across the near Arab world, including Royal Jordanian, Royal Air Maroc, Air Algerie and Tunisair, as the city is a major destination for global migrant,s especially from the francophone world. Atlanta was an interesting choice for Qatar's tenth U.S. city, a destination made not in cooperation with, but more in spite of hometown Delta Air Lines. 

Conversely, it is interesting to see that Qatar is absent from such primary gateways as San Francisco and Toronto. 

Qatar Airways: Non-stop to the United States, January 2015

A window screen advert, shields the Qatar Airways ticket office in the Seef quarter of Manama, Bahrain from the blazing sun. A glossy, angled photo of "The Bean," Anish Kapoor's cloudgate sculpture in Millennium Park, Chicago, advertises Qatar's "5-star journeys to the USA" from Doha to Chicago, Houston, New York, and Washington. Philadelphia, Miami and Dallas announced in non-alphabetical order (but perhaps order of inaugural route?) in the second row— "launching soon" the asterisk denotes the still-large fine print. The latter three came on in the succeeding months; Los Angeles, Boston and Atlanta were later added in 2016. 

Delta Air Lines: Dubai to Atlanta, January 2016

A poster-stand placed outside an upscale travel agency in Dubai, advertising Delta's non-stop service to Atlanta, promising connections across the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America and beyond. At the time of the photo had barely a month to go. The flight was scrapped in a high-profile complaint by Delta that Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways have unfair advantage in the market. Although hardly the only market that Delta has retreated from (see Abuja, Monrovia, Cairo, Kiev, Amman, Bucharest, Budapest, Helsinki, Warsaw, Vienna, Cape Town, Delhi, Chennai, Istanbul, among others), Delta also stated in its press release announcing its withdrawal from Mumbai that the failure of the route was also due to the massive capacity that the Gulf 3 have added. It surely stung that Qatar launched a new service from Doha to Atlanta just months later—starting the service with an A380.

United Air Lines also pulled out of Dubai in January, and has also withdrawn the remainder of its Gulf operations, citing the same uncompetitive conditions, although here is an interesting blogpost regarding United's withdrawal from Kuwait, suggesting a different sort of government involvement.

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.

Delta's Transpacific Routes, January 2012

A map from the beginning of the year showing Delta's crisscrossing of the north Pacific. The remnants of Northwest Airlines half-century of service across the rim of the Pacific is clearly evident with Tokyo as a through-put hub, and Detroit, acting successfully if somewhat curiously as the primary Asian gateway of the long-haul system, as well as also keeping Minneapolis connected to Narita. Added to this are Delta's old standby, Atlanta, and its upstart hub at Salt Lake City (the first time Utah's capital has been mentioned on Timetablist).

Non-hubs Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco enjoy non-stops to Tokyo, and Portland, Oregon also continues to be blessed with a prestigious non-stop to Japan. Seattle has actually fared better under Delta than under Northwest: the Department of Transportation awarded a highly-lucrative non-stop to Beijing, the only entry point aside from Detroit, and a Sea-Tac to Kansai connection. Detroit also has the only transocean flight to Hong Kong, whereas Atlanta was granted DOT approval for a non-stop to Shanghai-Pudong (although this route was ultimately unsuccessful and has since been suspended). Lastly are a trio of lucrative connections between Honolulu and mainland Japan, including Osaka and Nagoya.

Note that Delta serves Haneda now also, as many international carriers scrambled to do. Tucked in between the massive Narita operation and the new mainland China gateways is Seoul Incheon, where Delta's SkyTeam partner, Korean Air, has its super hub, although Delta only links to the mainland US via Detroit (Korean Air serves Atlanta). Now that both China Eastern and China Southern are part of SkyTeam, mainland connections may be just as important.

The following post will detail the Asian portion of the map, showing connections from Narita to Southeast Asia.

The Intercontinental Destinations from Munich, Summer 2011: Western Hemisphere

Despite the increasing presence of exotic global carriers and the extensive reach of the Star Alliance, Munich remains a primary gateway into Central Europe from North American cities. Air Canada, United Airlines, USAirways, and Delta all fly to Munich, but Lufthansa is the primary carrier across the Atlantic to the Alps.

Delta Air Lines: The African Routes, Summer 2011

It is quite revealing to juxtapose this map with its iteration from two years previous. Delta's expansion into Africa has been an unquestioned success, even if some of its plans for linking the continent have not come to pass.

Aside from the long transatlantic lines coming across the page from Atlanta and JFK, what may be most striking is the appearance of a minihub at Accra's Kotoka, with services to both American gateways, as well as onward flights to Monrovia and Abuja (indirect service to the capital via Ghana surely stings many proud Nigerians; whereas most Liberians are merely thrilled to have the US carrier at all--and revel in its recent announcement of a third weekly Atlanta connection). A third spin-off is optimistically drawn to connect Malabo, the tiny capital of the tiny, and hugely wealthy, oil-rich state of Equatorial Guinea.

Absent is the erstwhile Cape Town service, and there is no mention of Sal in Cape Verde (itself originally conceived as a minihub), nor any onward services to Nairobi and Luanda, the latter entirely excluded from the map. Johannesburg is reached by a long stretch from Atlanta, by-passing the earlier way station at Dakar-Yoff.

The Arab Spring left Cairo off Delta's system for the summer; the airline's only Middle East destination is currently Dubai, besides its connections to Ben Gurion. Amman was tried and dropped. India is still reached from Amsterdam, a legacy of the Northwest Airlines partnership with KLM.

Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky: The international non-stops, Winter/Spring 2005

Five Years ago, Cincinnati was connected with four European capitals daily: London (Gatwick), Paris, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt, all by Delta Air Lines, which once operated one its largest hubs from the banks of the Ohio River.  Pre-SkyTeam Partner airline Air France often landed from CDG itself. In addition, Delta landed in Northern Kentucky from Cancun, Nassau, Montreal, and Toronto.

Today, only the Paris connection remains, although Cincinnati continues to be painfully squeezed between Delta's massive hubs in Atlanta and Detroit, as well as Memphis, also under pressure to shrink, and Minneapolis (the latter three inherited from Northwest). Meanwhile, Delta launched seasonal service from Pittsburgh to Paris, which continues to operate in the summer season, usually with a B757.

British Airways, the North American routes, Autumn 1999

The Trans-atlantic routes are the lifeblood of BA, but its interesting to note that a handful of these cities no longer see jets from London. These include Pittsburgh, which was once a major midwestern hub and is today eerily quiet, and Detroit, from which sadly BA recently withdrew as an unprofitable destination. More interesting are the sunbelt boomtowns, such as Charlotte, which is still connected to Europe by USAirways, as well as Phoenix and San Diego, which despite their growing size seem to lack the cosmopolitan need for a connection to Heathrow.

Delta Air Lines: The African Routes, January 2009

Delta Air Lines has, in the last few years, become hugely committed to Africa, as evidenced by this stylish route map page from their January 2009 in-flight magazine. What makes this particularly interesting is that several of the routes shown here have yet to launch, and may never be realized. Of the new destinations shown here, only Abuja has been successfully added, and Cape Town's days of seeing US-registered craft ended this summer. Delta recently issued a press release, stating their recommitment to several of these routes, such as Malabo and Monrovia, in Summer 2010. We shall see.

Delta also serves the Mid-East market thoroughly, with transatlantic services to Amman, Cairo, Dubai, Kuwait, and Tel Aviv.