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. 

Alitalia: The Intercontinental Network, 1973

Another historic relic from Airline Memorabilia, a newsprint amp arrayed with the bright-green lines of the great Italian flag carrier of 1973. Truly "Italy's World Airline."

Unlike today, Alitalia of forty years ago was a six-continent global behemoth, with service to seven North American cities, including those like Detroit and Philadelphia that it no longer serves. Even Washington, D.C. is no longer a destination, and service to Chicago is seasonal. A further seven Latin American cities are shown, of which Lima, Caracas, Montevideo and Santiago have since been curtailed.

Somewhat Amazingly, the airline flew a wide band of routes across southern Asia to deepest Antipodea, with a twisting array of Kangaroo routes reaching both Sydney and Melbourne via Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Singapore, and/or Bangkok, with onward service also to Hong Kong. Southeast Asia was itself reached via Karachi, Bombay, and Delhi. Exactly zero of these cities see the Italian airline today; the only Asian destination east of Iran is Tokyo.

What is perhaps even more noticeable, front-and-center of this polar projection, is the extensive African network, showering down from both Rome and Milan. A closer examination of these will be the subject of the next post.

Special Thanks as always to Airline Memorabilia for the use of the image. 

Boston Logan International Departures, April 2008

The evening departure board for the International Terminal E at Boston Logan Airport on Sunday, April 27, 2008. Between 6:20 an 9:40pm, there were ten flights to eight European cities on on eight airlines. Although only mid-Spring, Northwest Airlines was offering its two departures to Amsterdam Schiphol, as it still does on a summer schedule (although today it is Delta out of Terminal A). Northwest operated all its flights out of Terminal E, which is why Indianapolis and Detroit are shown during the 19:00 hour.

London is by far Logan's busiest overseas connection: here are two flights on British Airways and Virgin Atlantic to Heathrow, while over at Terminal B an American Airlines flight was also preparing to follow. Aer Lingus's departures to both sides of the Emerald Isle leave one after the other, the second stopping in Shannon. Other European flag carriers include Lufthansa to Munich, Iberia to Madrid, SWISS to Zurich, and Icelandair to Reykjavík, which lands at Keflavík International in a few short hours.

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.

Allegheny Airlines: Systemwide Network, 1963

Allegheny Airlines, the pride of the Northeast, had a taught span across the spine of Appalachia. Mainline schedules between a northern terminus at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and a southernmost end at Washington, cross-hatched with activity out of its strong bases at Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Wilkes-Barre, Providence and Baltimore.

Many municipal airfields which have no commercial service today, including those at Wheeling, New London, Bridgeport, Reading, were linked to regional capitals in Allegheny's cats-cradle.

The most distant routes reached the Great Lakes, splitting from Jamestown on the shores of Lake Chautauqua, continuing northward to reach Buffalo and westward to Erie, where it split again to either of those great mid-American metropoli, Cleveland and Detroit. A southwestern spur from Pittsburgh plunged down the Ohio River Valley, touching Wheeling, Marietta, and terminating at Huntington-Ashland.

Allegheny would, fifteen years after the publication of this map, and in the frenzied era of deregulation, form the basis for USAir, which would in turn lead Pittsburgh and Baltimore through massive airport expansions as major mid-continent and mid-Atlantic hubs. Today, only USAirway's presence at Philadelphia and its general prominence in the metro Washington and New York markets lend any veneration to its Alleghenian origins.

Northwest Airlines: The Oriental Route, c.1953-54

This isn't the first example shown on Timetablist of Northwest Orient's famous span over the brow of the planet was a consistent feature in its promotional advertising during its golden age of post-war expansion. Decades before United, Delta or American crossed the international date line, the red routes of the stratocruisers swarmed over the rim of the Pacific in a great arc, connecting New York and Washington with the junk-crossed harbor of Hong Kong and the neon lights of Tokyo.

In between, Northwest linked the industrial belt of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee and Chicago with the prairies of Minnesota and Alberta and the Cascades, at Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland, from whence it connected to the exotic isles of Hawaii, not yet a state. Connection service is shown down the California coast, but apparently this was beyond the extent of Northwest's route authorities in the 1950s.

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.

BOAC: Worldwide Routes, 1962

Showing some unusual destinations, such as Brazzaville, Kano, Dakar and Windhoek that are no longer served by successor British Airways.

TWA: Detroit-Paris-Rome

Not certain just what to make of this: Was there really a 1963 non-stop Detroit-Paris on TWA, which went onward to Rome?

JAT Worldwide, 1970-85

JAT has always been a Timetablist favorite, if only for its dedicated attempt to access the Yugoslavian-American diaspora of the upper Midwest, where it was for a time the most exotic weekly visitor to Detroit and Cleveland Hopkins, and adding to Balkan flavor of Chicago O'Hare.

Here we find a bright blue map set, from sometime in the early 1980s or perhaps earlier, prior to its broadening of Great Lakes destinations. Its overall reach is quite impressive, a global arch with Beograd as its keystone, which turns at Shannon to stretch to Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto and New York.

Looking east, the red line bends across Europe to play the role of what has to be one of the more perculiar Kangaroo carriers, with an axis spanning Ankara- Tehran- Karachi -Bombay-Madras-Singapore and terminating at that great Yugoslav enclave of Sydney.

USAirways to Europe, 2000

The Midwestern Metropolis has, as part of its rusting decline, suffered from retreat by both domestic and foreign carriers. Continental has tried to connect Cleveland to London and Paris without lasting success, and hasn't seen a foreign flight since JAT left twenty years ago. Even mighty Chicago O'Hare has in recent years seen the final departure of Pakistan, Kuwait, El Al, and Singapore, among others. Detroit has lost British Airways, and its fate and that of Cincinnati's many European departures rest in the hands of newly unified Delta, which will likely soon determine that it has too many upper-central hubs.
But these airports still have their feeder networks, and their main-line jets to both coasts. None has been so decimated as Pittsburgh, a massive airport which is now half-empty, its lengthly concourses truncated. This advert, from a USAirways sub-timetable for Boston Logan shows, just nine short years ago, Pittsburgh had daily widebody A330 and B767 departures to Frankfurt and Paris, and British Airways B747 service to London Gatwick. Today, Delta Air Lines is trying a narrowbody 757 to Paris, a major rebound that will hopefully last. USAirways itself serves more European cities than ever, nearly 20 from Philadelphia, and is banking, like the rest of America's legacy carriers, on its international network to make profits. It is in the works to serve Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Tokyo and perhaps Shanghai in the next few years. While it is true that international passengers provide wider margins, it remains to be seen just how many passengers show up for all these new flights.

KLM: Amsterdam-Detroit

Although today brings a global broadcasting of the air bridge between Amsterdam and Detroit, it is interesting to remember that Northwest's pioneering partnership with KLM brought the bright blue bellies of the Dutch 747s to Romulus some 18 years ago. KLM and Northwest switched duties often, bringing KLM MD-11s to Memphis and currently leaving DTW without any Netherlands-registered planes. Compare this envelope's Renaissance Center and People-Mover motif with Sabena's first day cover, a further 18 years earlier.

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.

Sabena: Brussels-Detroit

What surprise to find that Sabena reached the motor city in April 1980? Perhaps this was simply an extension of Toronto or Chicago routes; the service does not seem to have lasted long. In one of the most drastic alterations to the transatlantic scope of services, no Belgian-flagged carrier serves North America today, a big shift from pre-2001, when Sabena landed daily in a number of cities, including Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, and Cincinnati (the latter two a result of the link-up with Delta Air Lines). VG Airways was short-lived, and Brussels Airlines concentrates on Europe and Africa. Delta, American, United, Continental and USAirways are the only choices for US-Brussels routes. The custom envelope is lovely, with the Renaissance Center towers merging with the church steeple.

Northwest, the Polar Routes, c. 1954

Polar Projected Maps are somehow alluringly dynamic, especially when spanned by the daring navigations of the pioneering airlines of the post-war era. In this category, none is a better example than Northwest Orient, a carrier which early on challenged the limits of American intercontinental contact with an intrepidation rivaled only by the exotic ports of Pan Am.

Northwest has stayed true to its patron cities, as forty and fifty years on, NWA is still strong in Detroit, Minneapolis, Seattle, Milwaukee, and keeps its mighty Pacific hub at Tokyo (although now out at Narita, when at the time it was at Haneda).

The above Asiatic route crests at Anchorage, and with seemingly-necessary stops at the tiny, frigid island airstrips at Shemya and Chitose, before plunging down the rim of the Pacific to arrive at Tokyo, with an onward network spanning to Okinawa, Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Manila.

Northwest has a rich and proud history, which somewhat sadly is in the process of being painted over in Delta's livery, which swallowed NWA for its strong Asian presence, particularly its Tokyo hub.