Air Malta Network, Summer 2011

 

Malta has long acted as a crossroads of the Mediterranean: stage of empires, prophets, and crusades. Today it is a densely-populated, package-tour destination, home to a sizable contingent of Ryanair retirees, and more recently has earned a (dis)reputation as a corrupt tax haven. 

All these priorities are reflected in the reach of its long-operating flag carrier, Air Malta. There are numerous links in the eastern Mediterranean: Athens, Istanbul, and Larnaca, and eight airports in Italy, including several that don't see many foreign carriers, like Verona, or the cities on the nearby boot and isle of Sicily: Catania and Reggio Calabria—here making its Timetablist debut.

Likewise, there is an abundance of service to the UK and Germany, true to the island's nature as a holiday-break hub. Secondary cities such as Aberdeen, Leeds, and East Midlands in Britain and Bremen, Dresden, Hamburg, Hanover and Stuttgart in Germany. 

Curiously, the map also has small insets at left, with the central portion of the United States East Coast above, and the Gulf below. The former is marked with two destination dots: "Newark" and "Manhattan" while Abu Dhabi is denoted on the latter. However, Air Malta has never had either wide-body, long-haul aircraft nor has it ever served any long-haul destinations, not to the Middle East and certainly not transatlantically. These are surely some sort of code-share designation, but that is not explained; furthermore, unless Air Malta has a partnership with a Helicopter service, in no way does it actually serve Manhattan any more than any other airline, codeshare or not. 

Imperial Airways: The Worldwide Routes, 1937

The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection is one of the world's great cartographic archives; with over 150,000 items in its holdings at Stanford University. Fully searchable and viewable online, it is a wonderful resource. 

The last post, with the global-projection map of Oman Air, has some affinity with the earliest route maps at the down of the pre-war commercial aviation era, specifically this detailed item showing the Air Lines of Imperial Airways in 1937, at an extent which would not be resurrected until after World War Two. 

What is particularly remarkable about this map is how complex it is, with two world projections duplicating similar information, which itself is intertwined with many various, and vaguely articulated 'cooperation' operations carried out by unnamed 'other air transport companies.' 

As expected, the trunk routes of the empire fan out from London, with a trans-European line spanning Central Europe to terminate at Budapest, while a second, trans-Mediterranean line runs from Marseille to Athens to Mirabella (today known as Elounda) in Crete, finally crossing the greater part of the middle sea to reach first Alexandria and then Cairo, from whence the great route begins to touch at way-stations within Britain's various post-Ottoman holdings in the Near East, and ultimately eastward to the major outposts of Empire in India, Malaya, and Australia, as we will see in the next post. 

A second line continues southward toward Luxor, continuing onwards to Sub-Saharan Africa, which a subsequent post will examine in detail.

Qatar Airways Route Network, November 2016: Europe

Like it's arch-rival Emirates, Qatar Airways blankets Europe with over two-dozen non-stops from Doha, although many of these are with its narrow-body A320 aircraft, the airline also intersperses its A330, B777, and B787 widebodies into these operations. Paris and London also see Qatar's double-decker A380 superjumbos. Qatar serves a number of cities which seldom see intercontinental flights, especially in southeastern Europe and the Balkans: Sarajevo and Skopje in particular. 

Emirates Route Map, August 2016: Europe

A thick baobab trunk of routes juts up from Mesopotamia, spreading its boughs across the European continent. With a staggering 37 European destinations, Emirates has blanketed the region with flights even more so than any other portion of the globe, from Moscow to Manchester, Milan to Malta, Madrid to Munich. The depth of its reach is shown in secondary and tertiary markets: Prague, Budapest, Geneva, Lyon, Nice, Oslo, Glasgow, Bologna, and Hamburg are just a handful of third-tier cities which see a wide-body Emirates plane land daily, non-stop from Dubai.

TAROM Romanian Airlines: Worldwide Routes, c.1974

Continuing to look at the global extent of the airlines of the Eastern Bloc at their height, this unique map shows the routes of TAROM, the Romanian state carrier spreading across four continents. 

There are plenty of routes within Europe, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, culminating in an interesting Bucharest—Prague—Amsterdam—New York schedule as its sole operation across the Atlantic. This route may or may not have stopped in Gander—it is difficult to be certain as the cartography inconsistently marks destinations, with the red lines variously pass over or turn at a city without a marker, or break at a city on the map, or such breaks are marked by a circle around the underlying city.  

Several lines cross the Mediterranean to Algiers and Tripoli (possibly by way of Benghazi) in a similar vein to Czechoslovak Airlines. 

     

What is unquestionably the most notable aspect of the airline's operation occurs on the southeastern corner of the map: the long, winding tentacle reaching its way from Bucharest to Istanbul, then onward to Tehran and then reaching Karachi, where it elbow-bends along the Indus and over the Himalayas to reach Urumchi in Chinese Turkestan, where it continues across the vast People's Republic, where it seems to waystation at Hami, Yumen, and Taiyoun to finally terminate at Beijing. 

With just a little over 100,000 people live in tiny Yumen City, in Gansu province, which doesn't even boast an airport. While Hami, a small outpost in Xinjiang, has a regional airport, and Taiyoun's Wusu International is the principal airport of Shanxi Province, there are few international flights, and no European service, from these three cities. This trans-Socialist aviation envoy is surely a rarity in aviation history. 

ČSA Czechoslovak Airlines: The African Routes, 1968

Fast-forwarding nearly half a century from the last post, but still considering the long history of
ČSA Czechoslovak Airlines. Here is the carrier at its zenith, a four-continent flag carrier hoisting the socialist banner aloft across the globe. This detail from a route map, from about 1968, shows a dense network fanning out from Prague. While much of the quintessential cities of the earliest route spine remain: Belgrade, Zagreb, Warsaw, Budapest, and many more routes radiate outward from Central Europe. The red lines around Vienna and Bratislava are quite dense, clustering at Athens to continue into Asia.

Across the Mediterranean, there are non-stop flights from Ruznye to Algiers and Tunis—Tripoli. Further east, several lines seem to spread out from Geneva, one of which continues southward to Casablanca and then onward to Dakar and Freetown. In a clear echo of Interflug's West African service featured here last month, it seems the post-colonial promises of realignment prompted a Pan-African operation from Prague. Somewhat confusingly, Monrovia, Liberia, is marked in a red circle, but the routing does not connect it. Perhaps a typo? Perhaps meant to indicate Conakry? 

Czechoslovak State Airline Network, 1932

Recent posts from the Eastern Bloc and the Elbe Valley remind us for this ancient item. From our records, this may be the oldest article ever featured on the Timetablist. A 1932 flight plan for the Czechoslovak State Airline, the earliest ancestor of CSA, in one of its first years of operation.

Several spider webs of spindly routes spread outward over the toast-brown landscape, from the main base at Prague, but also Vienna, Munich, Berlin, Warsaw and Venice. It's possible that the airline's own operations were merely those marked by the thicker line: Karlovy Vary—Prague—Brno—Bratislava—Zagreb and Bratislava—Košice—Cluj—Bucharest. A dozen other secondary cities are shown, it's unclear who, in these early days of aviation, was operating these routes. 

What looks to almost certainly be a Ford Tri-Motor tilts its way over Trieste in a tangerine dawn. Czechoslovak Air is listed as an operator on the craft's Wikipedia page. 

Sadly, this aviation pioneer was short-lived, as the Sudetenland annexation was barely eight years away from the publication of this literature. CSA would be resurrected in the post-war era, as we shall see in the following posts. 

Interflug Timetable, Winter 1975-76, Part 1

The unscheduled discovery of this Interflug memorial website has gotten us sidetracked in reviewing its treasures. This post celebrates the first half of a photocopy-palletted schedule from November 1975 to March 1976 for routes within Europe and the Middle East, as well as the single transatlantic route, the historically curious twice-weekly Berlin—Gander—Havana service, which probably didn't ferry the freezing Newfoundlanders to sunny Cuba on the way. 

Other flights follow from previously-posted material of earlier years: one of the Iron Curtain spines in the latticework, the Berlin—Leipzig—Erfurt—Budapest—Tirana operation is shown at top, and below it one-off flights to the free world: Milan, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Vienna. Shown below is the all-important to Moscow and Leningrad. The largest box shows four weekly operations to the Near East: to Cairo, to Beirut, and Damascus—Baghdad. 

The next post shows the remaining pages of the schedule. 

Air Malta: Routes Serviced, April-October 2011

A table of Air Malta weekly flights, showing 34 airports Malta's flag carrier serves on its own each week in the summer, and also 12 airports served by one of several partner airlines such as bmi, Brussels Airlines and Etihad. The airline serves a large number of cities in both Italy and Germany (including Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Hanover, and Stuttgart), connecting several cities from each country every day to the Mediterranean island. There are no services to anywhere in nearby North Africa, however.

Aegean Airlines: The Eastern Network, Summer 2012

Continuing from the previous post, Aegean Airlines' right-hand side from the same map, showing mostly seasonal operations as far distant as St. Petersburg, Tblisi and Kuwait. Its farthest year-round destination seems to be Moscow. Budapest, just at the page's spine, and Istanbul are also connected to Athens, while a mini hub at Larnaca, Cyprus links to Thessaloniki, Athens, and a number the islands, especially the sizable airports at Chania and Heraklion on Crete, with an all-A320 fleet. The only airport in Asia served year-round appears to be Tel Aviv.

Finnair: Worldwide Network, c.2005-08

Finnair's own Baltic blue flavors this smooth polar projection of the airline's routes. The destinations arrayed are quite similar to the last post, although with all three of Finnair's destinations in Japan are shown, and the inclusion of Guangzhou, dating the map to sometime between 2005 and 2008. Miami is the southwestern extent of the network, although it is unlabeled.

Most remarkably similar to the previous post's map is the European segment, which seems to show the same cache of cities: Madrid, Milan, Budapest, Rome, Dublin, and Paris--suggesting some sort of special meaning in terms of intercontinental connections via Vantaa.

Finnair Worldwide Network, c.2009

A global route map of Finnair as viewed from the north pole. The airlines's routes to New York and Miami cross into Arctic airspace, while its long routes to Asia fan out to the right. A small bushel of European short-hauls, seeming tiny by comparison, do not depict all of the airline's regional routes; perhaps this is meant to simply illustrate connections to its long-haul network.

Special thanks to the website airreview.com for the image.

Brussels Airport Departure Board #5

Early evening at Brussels Airport means departures by and large within Western Europe, mostly by Brussels Airlines, along with Air France, British Airways, Alitalia, Iberia and TAP. The only exceptions to this are the Eastern European carriers: Croatia Airlines to Zagreb and TAROM Romanian Airlines to Bucharest. The only non-EU flight is El AL to Tel Aviv at 7:00pm.

Hainan Airlines: The International Schedule, January 2012

Several pages of the most-current Hainan Airlines timetable, featuring the impressive five-continent reach of China's only Skytrax Five-Star Airline. Services include a trio of B-class European cities: Berlin, Brussels, and Budapest, as well as a service from Urumqi, capital of Chinese Turkestan, to Istanbul.

Also included are a pair of Siberian cities: Irkutsk and Novosibirsk; several important Asia-Pacific cities, such as Busan, Sydney, and Singapore, as well as the airline's much-noted service to Luanda, Angola via Dubai. The airline's daily non-stop between Beijing and Seattle, its only American service, is shown as well.

Malév: First Flight from Budapest to Istanbul, 1957

Continuing our retrospective of the 66-year history of now-collapsed Malév, today's feature is this gorgeous vintage envelope celebrating Hungarian Airlines's flight from Budapest to Istanbul. A dusty blue field, sporting a thick, whimsical seriffed script of the airline, becomes the contrail of a turboprop, soaring over a cluster of minarets and domes, recalling the Ottomon-era links between the two capitals. This illustration is nearly identical to the photomontage in the red stamp at center, which features a Malév craft angling over an eastern skyline. Interestingly, the text is entirely in English.

Malev: The Italian Routes, c.1974

Another iteration of a previously-featured series of postcard route maps for Malév Hungarian Airlines, which sadly ceased flying this morning after 66 years of continuous operation. Here were the two principal routes from Budapest Ferihegy to Italy, one route to Milano, the other, via Florence, to Rome. both routes stopped in Zagreb and Venice, splitting at Ferrara.

Malev: The Southeast European Routes, c. 1974

Following on the previous post, this second, equally-vivd postcard shows Malev's Balkan routes, which interestingly bypass the region's capitals (Belgrade, Sofia, Bucharest, Zagreb) in favor of seaside leisure destinations along the Black Sea and that great Venetian fortress on the Adriatic: Dubrovnik. Perhaps the major cities were unserved, or perhaps this placard was meant to entice the socialist holiday-maker. Like the other item, each city is paired with an illustrated scene, further marketing each city as a vacation spot.

Malev Hungarian Airlines: European Routes, c.1974

An adolescent, iron-curtain Malev commissioned a series of eye-watering route map postcards in the 1970s. The Northwestern European network is here, thick red lines and red dots fanning out from Ferihegy as far as London.

Each city is delightfully accompanied by picture-book illustrations of landmarks: a wintry scene down the Prinzengracht towards the Westerkerk marks Amsterdam; Schloß Schönnbrunn stands for Vienna; the Charles Bridge for Prague. A dull vista of office blocks represents Brussels in its pre-EU years; East Berlin is landmarked by modernist office block towering over an arrangement of flagpoles in a windswept plaza. What a completely gorgeous and delightful item.

Hainan Airlines, Fall 2008

The global reach of Hainan Airlines in late 2008, when it had already arrived in Europe and the United States, but had yet to expand to become China's fourth largest airline and that country's only 5-star Skytrax carrier. In those intervening years, Hainan has expanded to serve more than 500 routes to more than 90 destinations, growing hugely in its own country, and extending to Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia.

Still based in Haikou, Hainan Island, the airline's present intercontinental operations are focused on Beijing, and now boasts flights to 5 cities in Russia, including Moscow; Almaty; Toronto; Luanda via Dubai; Khartoum; Berlin; and Sydney. Before the end of the year plans include new service to Kolkata, Colombo and Zürich, and the return of Cairo.

CSA Czech Airlines: The North American Timetable, 1982

Still diving through the incredible collection of Flickr user caribb. Here is a late Iron-curtain era handbook of ČSA Ceskoslovenske Aeroline, Czechoslovakia's state carrier, as its quad-engined IL-62 superjets roared across the Atlantic on Thursdays for the more democratic destinations of Montreal's Mirabel airport in Canada, which turned south to New York's JFK. Twice a week, OK578 spewed exhaust southward to arrive the next day at the socialist-tropical paradise of Cuba. If those two operations weren't convenient enough, on Sunday a Cubana IL-62 made the Prague-Havana run.

Note that Y class only was provided. A connecting service to Toronto and New York via Air Canada is helpfully included.

The top table appears to offer a feeder service from Budapest, Milan and Paris into these intercontinental services.

Timetablist would like to thank caribb (Doug from Montreal) for generously allowing the reuse of these images under creative commons license terms.