Qatar Airways: Worldwide Network, 2011. Detail #2: Africa

Continuing from the previous post: in 2011, Qatar Airways hadn't reached nearly as far on the African continent as arch-rival Emirates, although it had started expanding in the region. Such major gateways as Dakar, Accra, and Addis Ababa are absent, as are oil-capitals such as Luanda or Malabo. Only Lagos in West and Central Africa. Service to Entebbe began in November that year. The Indian Ocean leisure destination Seychelles stands out, as does the historic tourism hub of Luxor in Egypt. 

Qatar Airways Route Network, November 2016: The African Routes

Qatar Airways has not merely mimicked its rival Emirates in expanding across Africa, but has in several cases gone beyond the Dubai-based carrier to destinations which it now serves alone. These include more recent additions to the Qatar network, such as Kigali, Maputo (which has had a short and somewhat rocky history as a destination, served thrice-weekly with a Dreamliner), Marrakesh and Windhoek (added only back in October), but also more proximate East African destinations such as Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar (the latter served by flyDubai). The airline competes with Emirates on the major routes from Cape Town to Casablanca, but is not anywhere near as strong in West Africa, flying only to Lagos. 

Emirates Route Map, August 2016: Africa

As impressive as Emirates airline's reach across Europe is, the megacarrier blankets Africa equally, from Dakar to Dar Es Salaam to Durban. Here, the airline links together several city pairs for operation efficiency. As noted earlier, service to Dakar began backtracking to Dubai via Bamako recently; Lusaka service terminates in Harare; Kano and Abuja are banded together, and flights to Accra shuttle to Abidjan and back before returning to the UAE.

For all the credit that Emirates is due in its dedication to the continent, it had relegated the last of its comparatively older A340s to its African routes before retirement.

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.

Air Namibia Network, c.2000

From a brochure of Air Namibia from around the year 2000, showing the domestic, regional, and intercontinental network. From Windhoek, the airline's smaller craft fly to Walvis Bay, Lüderitz, Oranjemund, Ondongwa and Katima Mulilo in the Caprivi Strip. Namibia's neighbors are each connected by service to a single city: Maun in Northern Botswana (but not the capital, Gaborone), Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe (but not Harare) and Luanda in Angola. Air Namibia flew to both Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Long-haul routes, highlighted in bright Namibian blue, link London and Frankfurt on-board the pride-of-fleet Airbus A340 aircraft; both it and its international crew and European technical maintenance are featured prominently in the leaflet.

British Airways: the African Routes, 2013

Taken from British Airways' inflight magazine from mid-2013, showing its destinations in Africa from London-Heathrow, but also its regional flights on subsidiary Comair: Maputo, Port Elizabeth, Harare, Windhoek, Victoria Falls, Livingston, and Durban are not served by BA metal, and not long after this map went to print, Lusaka lost its long-standing flag-carrier service to Britain.

VARIG: Worldwide Network, 1973

The International route network of VARIG Brazilian Airlines in 1973 is a fascinating glimpse into a bygone world of flag carriers. Far more European cities are linked directly or indirectly with Brazil by its main airline than today, an indecipherable tangle of routes connects even tertiary airports such as Geneva and Copenhagen. The network funnels together at Rio de Janeiro, with Sao Paulo a tiny dot in Rio's shadow; today Sao Paulo is by far the dominant gateway into South America. Also note the southern Atlantic routes, particularly to Lagos and Cape Town. Ironic that four decades later this rising economic giant does boast a global carrier with an equal reach on continental Europe or Africa.

See the following post for a detail on the South American section of VARIG's network. 

Turkish Airlines: the African destinations, 2013

It's surprisingly anachronistic to find a printed timetable in 2013, complete with glossy dust-jacket and newspaper-thin black-and-white sheets inside. Yet Turkish Airlines still apparently publishes such a volume, which displays the breadth of what is suddenly the world's sixth largest airline.

To illustrate the density of this nascent megacarrier, the timetable shows several maps of the airline's vast, pentacontinental network. Here is the astonishing variety of the airline's destinations in Africa, where it has eclipsed its many European rivals in terms of number of cities served, and is well ahead of even the Gulf super-carriers in its sub-Saharan system, as it has landed in airports as uncommon as Nouakchott and Niamey, Kilimanjaro and Kinshasa, Mombasa and Mogadishu. The arrival of a Turkish B737-800 in the Somali capital last year made global headlines, and more recently a Turkish firm won the contract to administer the airport. Note the Turkish spelling as Djibouti as Cibuti.

Further expansion is underway, another Turkish B737-800 will land at N'Djamena via Kano before year's end.

South African Airways: the Southern African destinations 2013

Following from the previous post, this promotional brochure shows the ease of connecting to the southern cone of Africa from South African Airways's gateways in Europe: Munich, Frankfurt, and London Heathrow, via Johannesburg. With the map superimposed, these long-haul legs seem mercifully short. Cities in Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique and Malawi are shown, as well as the airline's many domestic destinations. In most cases, especially outside of South Africa, the proposition is to fly from Europe to OR Tambo, passing over a final destination, before tracking back to reach it on a local connection.

British Airways: The African Routes, c.2008

British Airways, a conservative carrier steeped in tradition, rarely makes changes, particularly to its unique route map illustration, which looks quite similar to this version from the beginning of the decade. 

The only changes are the loss of direct BA services to Harare, and the absence of the Dakar-Freetown route. The former is still on the map, but only as part of the South African-centered Comair network.

Since this printing, Dar Es Salaam dropped from the schedule just this past March, and only last week BA announced the end of its historic service to Lusaka-- two legacy routes to former colonies that can no longer be commercially justified.

Virgin Atlantic: African operations, June 2013

A visual from Virgin Atlantic's mobile app, showing the airline's African destinations as of this summer: Accra, Lagos, Cape Town, and Johannesburg, with the interactive showing single jet launching north from Murtala Mohammed to London Heathrow.

Virgin Atlantic's other destinations on the continent, Nairobi, Port Harcourt and Abuja have not lasted, although the airline's website still offers a destination guides to the latter two. Nor, somewhat surprisingly, has Accra, which, perhaps due to high fuel costs of operating a quad-engined A340 on the route, will end on 23 September of this year. Mauritius also did not last, although it and Nairobi are still bizarrely listed on its website. And, it should be noted, Cape Town is only seasonal.

Linhas Aereas de Moçambique Routes, 2012

The well-tended website of Mozambique's state carrier, Linhas Aereas de Moçambique, features a handsomely spare route map. Although the online image shows the entire globe, LAM's routes are almost entirely confined to southern Africa as shown here. It is therefore curious that Asia and the Americas are included, as LAM serves neither and in fact only recently was able to re-enter the ex-African market with its return to Lisbon this year. There is a strong emphasis on not only other continents but connecting carriers' services, which quite strangely are shown in solid lines on the map, while the airline's own network is only depicted in faint dotted lines: the effect is to blur distinctions and make LAM's own operations diminished.

While the scope of LAM's presence is small, it impressively flies internationally from what appears to be no less than eight of its ten domestic airports: flies to Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam come out of northeastern Nampula and Pemba, whereas Joanesburgo is served from five cities. There is also a nonstop from Maputo to Cape Town. Somewhat strangely, it appears that the flight to Luanda originates from Inhambane, and the flight to Lisbon on LAM's own wings appears to stop in Beira-- perhaps these are cartographic errors?

Air Zimbabwe Schedule from Harare, 1997

The full schedule of Air Zimbabwe services from Harare in 1997 shows 17 destinations on at least two, possibly three continents. The typical timetable handbook format, used around the world by many airlines, often presents some curious itineraries: as in this instance it is difficult to contemplate such a volume of passengers between Zimbabwe and, say, Salt Lake City, or Tampa, or Klagerfurt, or Barbados, to warrant taking up the space (and expending the printing costs).

This is particularly true as the state carrier at the time seemed to serve only Frankfurt and London Gatwick (interestingly via Larnaca) beyond Africa, aside a somewhat curious Harare-Perth-Sydney service, with a UM flight number but operated by a B747. As there is no other source which records this venture, it suggests that Air Zim was wishfully assigning a codeshare as its own metal.

A decade later, the airline's schedule would pivot away from Antipodean and Anglophone areas and orient itself along the Africa-Asia-China axis  (as seen yesterday) which has been a major story of the 21st century.

This item is borrowed from the incredible blog airline-memorabilia.blogspot.com which uncovered this 15-year old gem. The Timetablist is indebted to the Airline Memorabilia Blog for its continued support and the privilege of reposting these timetable pages. 

Air Zimbabwe Network, 1998

An academic airline illustration, from the January 2000 issue of the Journal of Transport Geography, in a paper titled, "Air Transport Operations and Policy in Zimbabwe, 1980-1998" by Chris Mutambirwa and Brian Turton.

The map isn't a graphic feat, its dry two-toned appearance fitting for the journalism at hand. The map shows not only current routes of Air Zimbabwe in 1998, but those such as Harare-Maputo and Victoria Falls-Windhoek that were withdrawn in 1997. The connecting lines also note the number of weekly flights per route. Gaborone is strangely out of place.

Zambezi Airlines Routes, 2011

Zambezi Airlines has had a short, rocky history, having commenced flights in 2008 just before the demise of Zambian Airways. But its certificate to operate was suspended by authorities from 2011 until just last month. The airline is now resurrecting its regional network of scheduled services, currently only operating from Lusaka to Johannesburg but surely hoping to return to its pre-crisis network, which as can be seen above stretched from the DR Congo to Dar Es Salaam to Cape Town.

With the continued growth of the Zambian economy and boom in its cooper belt, along with its positive democratic developments, the young airline has the opportunity to land its reticulated tail fin at other airports across the region, giving the rising nation a de-facto flag carrier and a regional player.

Air Mauritius Network, c.2011

Air Mauritius, Africa's fourth-largest airline, has an admirable reach across four continents. Especially impressive are the links with three Australian and three South African cities, the four largest hubs of India (bridging the sizable South Asian diaspora on the island state) and the cluster of long routes to Europe: six major gateways in five countries, plying the high-end tourist trade. Shanghai had just been added at the time of this map's publication, and two grey circles detail code-share set-ups which reach deep into westernmost Europe and southeast Asia. Unfortunately, since this graphic was drawn, some of this spread has retreated: Kuala Lumpur, Milan, Sydney and Melbourne are all sadly departed.

Air Namibia Network: The Airline of wide open spaces, c.1991

A delightful vintage postcard from Air Namibia. Its publication date can only be guessed at, but as the airline rebranded from its elongated crane logo to a more national, flag-based scheme in the late 1990s, and Air Namibia only launched at the country's independence in 1990, perhaps the small text "Windhoek Printers 91" indicates the year of press.

That issue aside, the airline at the time boasted a a Boeing fleet on B737-200s and its B747SP, the performative aspects of which are boasted on the back of the postcard, above a route map showing just six routes from Windhoek, the only one outside of southern Africa being the long stretch to Frankfurt. The text states the B747SP is "used on longhaul international routes" yet the map shows just this one.

Air Namibia Route Map, Summer 2011

The facing page of yesterday's schedule as it appears in Flamingo magazine, Air Namibia's in-flight literature, shows a stately map of the airline's full network. The page features not one but two compasses for the proper atmosphere or exploration, while the bottom of the page recommends booking online. Frankfurt's arrow is labelled with a repeat of the main title, beckoning with its "beyond," while Durban, a recent destination, is gone from the Indian Ocean coast.

Air Namibia Schedule, Summer 2011

The complete schedule of Air Namibia published in its in-flight magazine, Flamingo, in the summer of 2011, starts with domestic routes on board is Embraer 135, extending to its regional routes to various Southern African capitals with A319 and B737 aircraft, which also serve more distant Accra, and finishing with its flagship Airbus A340 flights from Windhoek to Frankfurt. 

Air Namibia Network, October 2011

An indigo-violet map showing Air Namibia's major routes, most notable for its far stretches to Accra and Frankfurt, but also its important links to South Africa: Cape Town, Durban, and of course Johannesburg, but also to neighboring capitals Harare, Lusaka, Gaborone, and Luanda. Regional tourism centers, most notably Victoria Falls and Maun, gateway to Botswana's Okavango Delta, are also covered.

Namibian airports with international operations are included here, such as Walvis Bay's link to Cape Town (WVB); Mpacha Airport at Katima Mulilo in the Caprivi Strip (MPA); and Rundu Airport in the Kavango region (NDU). Ondongwa Airport (OND) is also shown, although with only its tiny connection to Windhoek.