Istanbul Atatürk Airport Departure Board, December 2017

Continuing from the previous post, some nine months and 12 hours later, the same departure monitor screens inside the Turkish Airlines lounge at Istanbul Atatürk Airport, showing the bank of midnight flights across the globe, with nearly as much activity as in midday. As at all hours, home town flag carrier Turkish dominates the schedule, again challenging even the geographically astute by linking to such unusual and far-flung destinations as Antananarivo, Kabul, Ufa and Seychelles. Turkey's other airlines make an appearance, with Onurair flying to Nalchek in the Russian Caucuses at twenty past 12AM, and the now-defunct AtlasGlobal with a delayed take-off to Baghdad.  

There are several regional rarities that make an appearance, including Turkmenistan Airlines to Ashgabat (here spelt Ashgabad) as was featured on the Timetablist last month. The rather sketchy SCAT Airlines takes off for the uranium town of Aktau on the Caspian Coast of Westernmost Kazakhstan at ten til 2AM. 

The destination most frequently listed in this time block is Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport, listed 5 separate times, not only via Turkish at 11:45 but also Iranian carriers Aseman Airlines ("EP"), ATA Airlines (noted with the code "TBZ" as the very first entry) and Zagros Airlines at 2AM (also referred to with its longer ICAO code "IZG"). Since this time, according to the usually-reliable tables at Wikipedia, both ATA and Zagros no longer fly this route, nor indeed maintain a base at IKA altogether, shifting to solely domestic operations at Tehran's older secondary airport, Mehrabad International. 

One last mystery on the board are the two Egyptair flights MS9306 to Baku at 1:35 and MS9360 at 1:40 to Tokyo-Narita. They're frequent enough to be logged but what are these? Charter flights? 

AtlasGlobal Destinations, January 2018

A somewhat strange, translucent adverting stand placed in the lower level of the (now closed) Istanbul Ataturk Airport—one of those disappointing, low-ceilinged basements waiting rooms where travelers await the chaotic stampede of board-by-bus to the remote stand. 

As unappealing as the room is, it is not very much improved by plexiglass box obstructing the flow of passengers to the gate. But at least it is adorned with interesting stickers: Bishkek, Lviv, Kharkov, Makhachala, Nizhnekamsk, Tbilisi, Zaporizhia—even an astute geography buff could be stumped. Turkish low-cost, leisure airline AtlasGlobal specialized in regional flights across the Black Sea and Caspian region.

This, it seems, would be the high-point of AtlasGlobal, which always sounded a bit more like an industrial conglomerate than an air carrier. The airline faltered in the year following this photo, temporarily halting all flights, only to attempt a limited relaunch in early 2020 which only lasted until February of this year.

Atlas Global: Sharjah to Istanbul and Beyond, June 2016

Having repeatedly featured RAK Airways recently, the Timetablist stays with our theme of the less well-known of the United Arab Emirates' airports with Ras Al-Khaimah's neighboring emirate, Sharjah. Once a larger and more prominent waystation than Dubai, Sharjah today acts as a suburban bedroom community for its now-world-famous hub next door. With over a million and a half people, it is a significant urban center in its own right, and its airport, barely 20 kilometers from DXB, is served by about 20 airlines, regional flag carriers like Air India, Egyptair, Qatar Airways, Saudia and Pakistan International, to more distant and exotic carriers like Uzbekistan Airways and  SCAT of Kazakhstan.

Sharjah International may be most prominent due to its role as the home base of Air Arabia, the Easyjet of the Middle East, which dominates with flights to three score of destinations blanketing the UAE's near-catchment, from Sarajevo to Nairobi to Chittagong.

Also among the more low-cost carriers hanging at Sharjah is AtlasGlobal, a young Turkish airline whose new name (from the previous AtlasJet) makes it sound more like a cargo carrier than a passenger airline. With hubs at both of Istanbul's two airports and a fleet of red-striped A320s, AtlasGlobal seems to be following Air Arabia's model of generic no-frills regional connector. It will, it seems, splash out on advertising: here, along the humid corniche of Ras Al-Khaimah, these lightbox advertisements boast of AtlasGlobal's ultracheap roundtrips to Istanbul from Sharjah: at just AED892 (less than $250). Whether Atatürk or Sabiha Gokcen is not specified: AtlasGlobal services both from Sharjah, although it appears the Turkish dotted capital "I" was observed. Shame it couldn't get a better URL for its web address.