British Caledonian Schedule, 1977

A few pages from the timetable of British Caledonian Airways in 1977, demonstrating the breadth of its reach at the height of its operations, reaching on its own metal to Banjul while codesharing extensively with Air Afrique, Air France, and UTA Overseas French Airlines to Abidjan, Abu Dhabi, Bangui, and Baghdad with other connections to Bangkok and Bahrain on other carriers such as Singapore, KLM, Qantas, Gulf Air, and Thai Airways. The flight to Barbados is a rare bit of history: IQ2/IQ4 was a Martinair Holland DC-10 flying for the old Caribbean Airlines. 

Interspersed vintage black-and-white sketches give a flavor of the High Classic Jet Age, while an in-page advert feature's the airlines cargo operations. 

ASKY Route Network, June 2016

As mentioned in the previous post, the Accra-Monrovia sector was once the third-busiest route pair in West and Central Africa. Lomé-based ASKY Airlines for a time plied the corridor, for a time even acting as the sole carrier to Monrovia's secondary, inner-city airfield, Spriggs-Payne, but has since completely withdrawn from serving Liberia. 

The above route map, from mid-2016, shows Liberia and Sierra Leone as a gap in the carrier's extensive West African coverage, spinning out from Togo with a number of secondary links between regional capitals such as Niamey, Abuja, Libreville and Conakry in particular but also reaching under-served cities like Bangui and Bissau. 

Overlaid with ASKY's web are the bright green long-haul connections of parent company Ethiopian Airlines: to Addis Ababa, New York, and São Paulo. The Brazilian route, unfortunately, did not last (the airline switched the GRU non-stop to its Addis Ababa hub this year), but Ethiopian continues to invest in the ASKY project—and the Togolese government has responded with the opening of an enormous new terminal at Tokion in April of 2016. Since this time, Ethiopian has been able to sustain the transatlantic service to Newark, making tiny Lomé one of the just four West African airports with non-stop service to the United States. 

Royal Air Maroc: the African Routes, 2011

Staying with RAM from the previous post, rare is the route map that doesn't label the cities, but here Royal Air Maroc makes for a fun guessing game—particularly challenging as the Moroccan state carrier serves so many African and European cities that identification is not so automatic. 

Looking at West and Central Africa, a single, curving route line seems to connect Nouakchott—Bamako—Ouagadougou—Niamey, while there also seems to be a direct route to Bamako itself. There looks to be a link between Casablanca—Abidjan—Port Gentil. On the easternmost side, the service to Kinshasa appears to make a stop in Bangui. Accra, Lome, Cotonou and Lagos align smartly in the middle. 

Air Afrique Route Network, 1987 (2 of 2)

Following on from the previous post, this large-format map allows for a close examination of the regional network of Air Afrique. This network was both extensive and limited, paradoxically, in that it connected the capital cities of the ten member states with an impressive array of links, and yet at the same time served very few other cities in the region and no secondary cities within any country at all, except for the single example that proves the rule: Pointe-Noire, the seaside petrol port in the Congo Republic. But no Nouadhibou, for instance.

Outside of the major cities of its member-states, only Conakry and Lagos are served in Western Africa. Monrovia, Freetown, and Accra are bypassed. In Central Africa, the former member states of Cameroon and Gabon, which both subsequently set up their own national carriers, are still part of the system. Douala is connected to Bangui, Brazzaville, Cotonou, and Lagos—the latter a singular example of a non-member city connected with a non-member city. Even at this scale, it is unclear if the Douala—Cotonou route actually stopped in Malabo or this is just the confusion of the cartography. Likewise, Libreville is linked to Brazzaville, Lomé, and Lagos. No Yaoundé, however. 

A small detail that is easy to miss given the contours of the continental shelf is the Dakar—Las Palmas route. 

Air Afrique: The Four Continent Route Map, 1987.

Fitting to end this year's Air Afrique Week with one of the most magnificent items of the airline's heritage that this blog has been able to feature: a 1987 route map, found recently on the wall of a travel agency in Dakar, Senegal. 

The Map is based on a popular wall map that was widely distributed in the 1980s, and although strikingly colorful it is not particularly faithful to terrain or topography. It is generally a poor decision to begin a route map from a conventional map, as generally the original cartographer has already displayed a surfeit of information which is extraneous to displaying the airline's route system. 

While that is especially true in this case, as a Mercator Projection version of this map is thoroughly critiqued on this cartography blog, in this case the trouble is greatly mitigated by the use of white route lines against the dark, natural palette of the oceans and continents. 

Being itself a wall-sized poster, this map is also large enough to visually convey the complex network of Air Afrique to the observer by its scale. Beyond the dense interlacing of its regional network (which will be more thoroughly examined in a separate, subsequent post) what is immediately evident are the long haul connections to other continents.

Chief among these are the many Trans-Saharan routes to France, especially the fountain shower emanating out of Paris: Bordeaux, Abidjan, Lome, Ouagadougou, Marseille, Lyon, Ouagadougou, Rome, N'Djamena, and Bangui. 

The interior connections to southernly French cities was surely a stop-over operation: Bamako is connected only to Lyon and Marseille, for instance. Likewise, follow the many lines to see how Niamey, was linked to all three secondary French cities, including, apparently, via Agadez (gateway to vast Areva uranium mine that fuels most of France's public power utility) but not directly to Paris non-stop. Interestingly, one of the other cities not directly connected to Paris is one of the airline's main hubs: Dakar, which seems to be linked only via Nouakchott. or one of several other European cities. 

These latter elements—Dakar to Bordeaux, Geneva, Rome, and Marseille— are separated out from the crowd by swinging in a dramatic, centripetal fashion westward, well over the North Atlantic. The only route to the west of this is reverse-S curve Dakar—New York service. As has been stated many times before during our Air Afrique weeks, as much prestige as the multiple routes to the metropole afforded, it was this lone transatlantic operation that was the flagship pride of the consortium. 

It is easy in this rendering to overlook the other bell of Air Afrique's dual-hub network: Abidjan, whose ribboning loops link it across the region and again to Lyon, Marseille, Geneva, Bordeaux and again to Paris itself. The last intercontinental element is eastward endeavor from Chad to Jeddah, a nod to the pilgrimage traffic of so many Sahelians. 

The following post will focus on the regional route network. 

Air Afrique, Boarding Pass from the Congo, 1961

Here is an artifact from early in the life of Air Afrique: an old-fashioned ticket and boarding pass from 1961. While the details of the flight are not shown, the departure tax stub <<redevance>> was issued by the A.S.E.C.N.A. ground agents in the Republic of the Congo, the southernmost member of the Air Afrique coalition—indicating that this was likely departing from either Brazzaville or Pointe-Noire. In those days, destinations were many, mostly neighboring Libreville, Douala, or perhaps N'Djamena or Bangui. The ticket jacket provides the address of the airline's headquarters in Abidjan—perhaps that was the ultimate destination of this itinerary. 

Air Afrique: Africa, Europe, and NYC, 1972

Its been a few years since the Timetablist has held an Air Afrique Week to celebrate one of the greatest carriers in African aviation history. To kick off, here is a glorious example from early in the airline's life; a unique, colorful route map that not only cleverly represents the young airline's complex route system in much clearer fashion than more conventional formats. 

To nitpick, it is perhaps slightly confusing just what city connects with what: is that a Dakar—Bordeaux—Paris routing, or Dakar to Paris non-stop? Likewise, it's slightly unclear which schedules are shown between Abidjan—Lomé—Niamey—Nice—Geneva. 

The home state cities are in red; European destinations in green; slight size bias is given to Paris. None of these discs are comparable to the megaplanet that is NYC, the fledgling flag-carriers flagship transatlantic service, whose connecting schedule is listed at left: Kinshasa—Libreville—Lomé—Cotonou, which connects to the mainline DC-8 RK50 for Abidjan—Monrovia—Dakar—New York.

Kenya Airways: The Return of Bangui, November 2015

The last two posts have brought us to the Sahelian-Sudan region, a generally quiet corner of aviation history. Back in 2015, Kenya Airways, generally one of the powerhouses of the sub-Saharan skies, re-launched its flight to Bangui, in the Central African Republic, which it had suspended for more than three years due to the political crisis in the country, which resulted in U.N. intervention. KQ maintains direct flights from Nairobi JKIA to nearly two-thirds of the capitals of Africa; its many destinations are not labeled here and, confusingly are shown slightly out of place: Dakar a bit too north of where it should be, Johannesburg not quite south enough, Maputo too inland. It is easier in this map to see Jeddah, Dubai, Paris, London, Amsterdam, and even Mahe and Antananarivo. With the route network misaligned with the underlying geography, many cities can only be guessed at. 

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.

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. 

Toumaï Air Tchad: Weekly Schedule, March 2005

The weekly schedule of little Toumaï Air Tchad, the de-facto state carrier of the Republic of Chad, in early 2005. What might not be immediately evident, but is nonetheless a curious feature of this schedule, is that it does not actually mention N'Djamena, the country's capital, only significant city, and base of operations for the airline, by name. It is just presumed that each flight originates and returns to the international airport, the "NDJ" in the upper cell, near the vol, is the only written indication.

The only domestic destination, served twice-weekly, is the ancient imperial city of Abéché, now Chad's fourth-largest city, located in the eastern-central region of this enormous country. Tuesday-Sunday is dedicated to a Cotonou-Douala-Bangui operation, while Thursdays and Saturdays the airline reaches Brazzaville, via Douala or Bangui.  There are no flights on Wednesdays, and Friday has an additional operation to Niamey. There is no service to neighboring Sudan, Libya, or Nigeria.

The airline has had a troubled history, having been banned not only by the European Union but its own National regulators after a damning IATA safety report, and it is largely inactive at present. That hasn't prevented some from being enthusiastic and optimistic about the carrier.

Cameroon Airlines network, May 1975

Yet another gem from Timetable Images, this vintage artifact shows the extent of Cameroon Airline's operations from May 1975, at the height of the era when the airline adopted its psychedelically sweeping script. The cartography here is roughly accurate, the continental forms more sketch than measure, and the bright pink outline of the Republic is hugely oversized to its actual proportion, taking up much of what would actually be Nigeria, its crown-craned head stretching well into the central African territory that is actually occupied by Chad.

Unlike yesterday's post, showing the domestic network, here Douala takes center stage, with three intercontinental offerings: direct to Paris, direct to Marseille then Paris, and Rome-Paris and Nice-Paris. Curiously, the cover above differs from the inside Timetable, showing Geneva, and not Nice.

To the west, a classic West African coastal route hops twice-weekly to Lagos, Cotonou and Abidjan before leaping to end at Dakar; there's also a tiny jump to nearby Malabo (also absent from the index inside). A short southernly operation links Libreville and Brazzaville. The only international service from Yaoundé appears to be to Bangui. Lastly, and interestingly, the well-emphasized pan-Cameroonian interieur operation up the spine of the crown-craned country, Ngaoundéré-Garoua-Maroua, terminating at N'Djamena.

Special thanks to the incredible Timetable Image blog run by Björn Larsson, where credit is due for this item. 

Flight Connections from São Tomé & Príncipe, c.2009

A lost fragment of the internet, this orphan gif, a visual explanation of flight connections to tiny São Tomé & Príncipe, on not-particularly-recent vintage.

The microscopic archipelago is hardly a hub of anything, other than delicious and rare cocoa, but on this map it is the crossroads of the center of the map, the closest republic to where the prime meridian meets the equator. Or, at least, the Lusophone eastern hemisphere.

Luanda and Lisbon are linked, the former via TAAG Angolan Airlines, which still to this day continues on to Sal de Cabo Verde, the latter via TAP (of course) but something else called STP Airways, the acronym denoting the little-known state carrier. Lagos and Libreville are also looped in, the first via Ceiba, the Equatoguinean state carrier, the latter via something simply labelled 'air service.' How perfectly vague.

Douala in nearby Cameroon is served by SCD, an unknown acronym, which may be related to African Connection Airways, which apparently provides air service on the island which may, or may not, include Malabo, Port Harcourt, Brazzaville, Port-Gentil, Pointe-Noire and even Bangui, if its own map is to be believed. TAP is apparently re-routing its services as of July 1st via Accra.

Royal Air Maroc: The African destinations, 2011

Le Réseau Royal Air Maroc du Afrique shows the impressive extension of the airline's West and Central African operations as they stood in mid-2011. From Nouakchott to Niamey, Banjul to Brazzaville, Conakry to Kinshasa, RAM successfully bridges both the Anglophone and Francophone checkerboard of the region.

The map lacks route lines, which would be particularly helpful as many of these destinations are linked together before reaching the home airport at Casablanca (Freetown-Monrovia, for instance). Also, to connect with European and other intercontinental flights, many sub-Saharan cities are served at odd hours of the night—not the most convenient schedule, but for many of these cities, one of the few options out of town.

Afriqiyah Airways Network, 2011

A destination map of sorts, printed on the window shade of the Afriqiyah Airways ticket office, which now sits fading in the West African sun as the airline vacated in the office some time in 2011 due to its global grounding as a result of the Libyan revolution.

Previous to its sudden suspension, Afriqiyah was a surging force in trans-African transportation, connecting via its main hub at Tripoli to 14 West and Central African destinations as well as Johannesburg, transferring these intercontinental services to an array of European cities, from Düsseldorf to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Rome, as shown here, although the labels for each red dot are scattered, with Jeddah off the coast of Australia, Bangui near Antarctica, Ouagadougou and N'Djamena in the Indian Ocean, Khartoum at the Maldives, Abidjan near the Falklands, Kinshasa near Cape Town, Niamey near the Cape Verde Islands, Rome near Arkhangelsk, London north of Greenland.

Farther afield, Afriqiyah flew to a handful of Asian destinations: Jeddah and Dubai, predictably, somewhat randomly to Dhaka, Bangladesh, and distant Beijing.

Since the partial cessation of hostilities in still-volatile post-Qaddafi Libya, Afriqiyah has operated a diminished network, with services to Jeddah, Düsseldorf, London but not a single sub-Saharan city.

Air Afrique: The schedule from Dakar, 1990

Finishing this Air Afrique week on Timetablist, the schedule from Dakar's Yoff Airport, the multinational airline’s second home. Flights far and wide are displayed here, including cities far outside of the airline’s own network, from Bangkok to Chicago. In Europe, West Berlin and Bucharest are helpfully shown, while Atlanta (connection to Delta or Eastern) and Addis Ababa (connecting to Ethiopian at Abidjan) are featured as well. Special thanks again to Airline Memorabilia for the original posting.

Air Afrique: The schedule from Paris, 1990

Our second Air Afrique week continues, as does the cross-posting from Airline Memorabilia of the mid-1990 schedule from Air Afrique. This page rounds out the last of the Ouagadougou connections and starts the listings to and from Paris Charles de Gaulle, the premier destination for the multinational airline. Near-daily DC-10s departed from the primary hubs of Abidjan and Dakar (the schedule includes UTA DC-10s and B747s), while connections to Accra on Ghana Airways are shown below. UTA and Air Afrique also shared direct and on-stop connections from Bamako, Bangui, and Brazzaville.

Same-plan service as well as interline connections via the bigger gateways are shown for Cotonou and Lomé, while other airlines provide connections to Conakry, Lagos and Monrovia. Interestingly, service to secondary French cities such as Bordeaux and Marseille are shown as non-stops, meaning Air Afrique A300s and DC-10s landed in Southern France before reaching Roissy.

Air Afrique: The Schedule from New York, 1990

Continuing with Air Afrique week, and continuing with the pages of the airline's 1990 schedule first posted by Airline Memorabilia, the services to New York, the airline's only American destination. 

Air Afrique's twice-weekly DC-10 flights from Dakar to New York-JFK were the pride of it's network, even more so than the flights to metropolitan France. Here we see the full operation of both services, which originate in Abidjan on Wednesdays and Saturdays, both stopping at Dakar's Yoff Airport before crossing the Atlantic. Interestingly, the mid-week flight stops in Monrovia's Roberts International Airport; while the connection between Liberia and the U.S. is obvious, it was neither francophone nor a member of the Air Afrique consortium.

Aside from Abidjan/Dakar connections to Cotonou, Lomé, Bamako, Lagos and Niamey, the New York schedule suggests a number of connections not via Dakar, but on a trans-atlantic Air France B747 to CDG, which shows the various Air Afrique DC-10 flights to Brazzaville, Bangui, and N'Djamena. Intra-African links are also suggested on Ghana Airways to Accra and Air Gabon to Libreville.

Special thanks to the excellent Airline Memorabilia blog for allowing re-posting of this unique item.

Kenya Airways: the Africa Network, November 2011

From Kenya Airways in-flight magazine, recalling on older Timetablist posts showing earlier maps. KQ's West African network links the Nairobi hub with N'Djamena, onward to Cotonou, a non-stop to Lagos, connections to Freetown, Monrovia and Abidjan via Accra; a non-stop to Ouagadougou, and to Dakar via Bamako.

In Central Africa, Bangui, Yaounde, Douala and Malabo are variously interlinked and there are non-stops to Libreville, Luanda, Brazzaville and Kinshasa. Eastern and Southern African destinations will be discussed in the subsequent post.

Air Zaïre Network, 1981

Given this week's sleek but slender offerings from newly-minted Korongo, its incredible to look back a time when Congolese carriers had a much wider reach: the above poster shows the spread of Air Zaïre at its zenith, when it was "also celebrating 20 years" since its founding in 1961 as Air Congo.

The national carrier had an astonishing array of services, which are here represented by a powerful kinetic gesture reminiscent of an African antelope artwork. The European cities are connected by the arc of the animal's horn: Athens, Rome, Geneva, Frankfurt, Madrid, Amsterdam, London, Paris, and of course Brussels. 

The second horn aligns with the West African route, linking Kinshasa with Lagos, Libreville, Douala, Lomé, Abidjan, and Dakar. Lubumbashi is the only domestic destination included here but was hardly the only internal operation. 

East Africa on the animal's underside show Lusaka, its southernmost city (South Africa was shunned) but also Kigali, Bujumbura, Nairobi, Entebbe and Dar Es Salaam.

This calligraphic creature was used for a number of years, appearing on timetables and other advertisements. Air Zaïre's fortunes would sink with the rest of the continent's aviation companies, and indeed with country itself, which continues to be mired in conditions far less promising than a quarter century ago.