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. 

Uganda Airlines: Current and Future Routes, 2025

Although of the same name as the flag carrier featured in yesterday's post, Uganda Airlines of the 21st century is a new government venture, founded in 2018 and with first flights launched in August 2019.

The state enterprise received a pair of ultramodern A330-800s in December of 2020, which allowed the airline to spread its wings to Dubai and Mumbai. The first route faces stiff competition from both an Emirates B777 and flyDubai. The widebodies are also used on more medium routes such as its only West African operation: Entebbe-Abuja-Lagos-Entebbe. 

The above pair of maps, from the airline's website, are somewhat curious graphics. The top image is labeled as showing Uganda Airline's existing destinations, while clicking the "View Planned Routes" button brings up the second image below. 

Although the geographically proficient can easily decipher the destination dots, it is strange that they are not labeled automatically. Even more incongruously, Uganda's ambition to reach London has already been realized, as there is a multi-week service to Gatwick with the A330s, which began in May this year. The website has simply not been updated. 

This prestigious long-haul joins the other showcase routes, and the regional network that includes Nairobi, Mombasa, Mogadishu, Dar Es Salaam, Zanzibar, Juba, and Kinshasa, as well as the important southern African route to Johannesburg. These links are run with the airline's CRJ regional jets, which is perhaps surprising for Johannesburg especially, that it doesn't see the widebodies. More recently, a 9-year old Danish-registered A320 joined the fleet, and makes appearances on the South Africa route. 

The future route map is more accurate in that Jeddah, Guangzhou, Lusaka and Harare have not yet been realized. Note that neither map features Abuja, either. 
 

Uganda Airlines: Route Map & Timetable, mid-1986

 

A classic handy pocket guide to the operations of Uganda Airlines, which at the height of its glory provided a tri-continental operation from its hub at Entebbe its (single?) 707-320B roared out of equatorial Africa each day. 

The schedule reveals that the quadjet originated in Nairobi on Wednesday, bound for Cologne-Bonn Airport then London Gatwick; on Thursday a noon departure stopped in Rome and then to London, while the Sunday service was Nairobi-Entebbe again and then non-stop to Sussex. 

Uganda Airlines was a strikingly early adopter of Dubai as an extra-continental destination, in the mid-1980s the emirate was decades away from emerging as the regional superhub and its own hometown airline was just celebrating its first birthday at the date of this publication. Nonetheless the Ugandan state carrier redirected its Boeing to southwest Asia, with a Nairobi-Entebbe-Dubai service on Monday and a nonstop on Friday, both staying on the desert tarmac overnight and returning on Tuesday and Saturday morning.  

The cover route map promises onward connections to the Americas from London and "connect Far East" from Dubai. 

International Departures from O.R. Tambo Airport, July 2017

Staying at the southern end of Africa, a schedule of three hours worth of international departures from O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, the busiest airport on the African continent. The board is dominated by hometown carrier South African Airways, with flights to Walvis Bay and Windhoek, both in Namibia; Lusaka, and Livingstone in Zambia; Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania and Entebbe in Uganda, as well as the final flight shown, to Harare, about two hours after Fastjet's flight to the Zimbabwean capital. 

Indian ocean airlines are also seen here: Air Mauritius and Air Seychelles leave ten minutes apart. Ethiopian Airlines connects to Addis Ababa. 

The Fastjet Network, April 2016

Of the many arrows that have wounded the mighty Kenya Airways in the past several years—aside from the general decline of Africa's economies from the 'Africa Rising' decade of the early 2000s—the advent of low-cost rivals in its home region has only further eroded its growth.

More so than any other carrier, upstart Fastjet has stolen away passengers with its fleet of new planes offering staggering minuscule airfares. The airline did not decide to go head-to-head in Nairobi, basing its operations in Dar-es-Salaam, which has more of a supply vacuum. 

Rumors that famed aviation entrepreneur Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou of Easyjet fame was launching another airline surfaced in 2011; specific plans for an African low-cost airline emerged in 2012 ahead of Fastjet's November 2012 launch. 

Well capitalized, Fastjet grew quickly through 2015, but has since been dragged by the same headwinds that have hurt Kenya Airways. South Africa has gone from BRIC economy to sinking like a brick. Zimbabwe remains one of the world's least functional states, and Zambia's growth has evaporated with the slumping of the copper price. Not easy turf to turn a profit on.

Throughout last year, a dramatic boardroom battle played out across East African and global business papers, as Stelios mounted a campaign to reform the management of the ailing airline. The ouster was successful, however since that time Fastjet has left the Kenyan and Ugandan markets entirely, and its flights to Zanzibar lasted barely a year.  Several of the services shown above, including its longest route, Dar—Johannesburg, have been scrapped. Still, the airline offers flights domestically within Tanzania and to four other countries, with many fares started at less than US$100.

Sudan Airways: 20th Anniversary Cover, December 1967

The Imperial Airways posts this week concluded back in the historic Sudan, colocating with this colorful Sudanese envelope from thirty years later. The tri-color celebratory cover itself offers the route map of Sudan Airways, with twelve destinations from London to Beirut to Nairobi shown in bright, wide red bands, while a dozen other airfields, mostly configured in a latitudinal axis from Fort Lamy to Jeddah to Aden, seem secondary in blue. There isn't a map legend to fully explain the distinction, however. 

A quadrant of dynamic scenes, the fleet of the state carrier, soars out of the more multicolored philately at top right: a DC-3 hums across a Nilotic sunset scene; beneath, a Fokker F-27 friendship as it rides over a purple landscape, a group of nomadic camel herders below. At lower right, all the superior speed of the flagship Comet 4C accelerates into rows of contrails, what seem to be the greens and blues of the very contours of the continents rush by in a blur. 

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.

Lufthansa: The Worldwide Network, Part 2: The Afro-South American System.

Continuing from the previous post, it is, as always, interesting to note the enormous number of African destinations that were once served by European airlines. Lufthansa flew to a great many more African cities than today, shown here in three trunk lines extending across the Mediterranean. In the east, a route to Khartoum turns at Addis Ababa to make its way to Entebbe, then on to Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam, where the line splits to terminate at Mauritius or further south to Johannesburg, which meets the central trunk from Tunis—Tripoli to Accra, Lagos and then Kinshasa, shown cluster together in the Bight of Benin. Many of these sub-Saharan services have been presented on the Timetablist before.

In the Western Mediterranean, a third line passes again through North Africa and continues straight across Dakar towards South America. turning only slightly at Rio de Janeiro, plunging further to Sao Paulo—Montevideo—Buenos Aires and turning 90 degrees to finish to Santiago, which is also linked along the Andes to northernly American cities.

As it has so many times in the past, Timetablist would like to express its appreciation for Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal)'s incredible collection, and to say thanks  for allowing the reuse of these images under creative commons.

Sabena: First Flight Brussels-Elizabethville, May 1953

An historic gem showing the Brussels-Rome-Athens-Cairo-Entebbe-Stanleyville-Elizabethville route's launch in May 1953, which was noted on Sabena's route map earlier this week without the Ugandan stop. The envelope, stamped at Ciampino Airport in Italy, was only posted as far as Lake Victoria's shores, in British East Africa.

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.

Sabena: The African Network, 1973

Continuing from the previous post, but focussing on Africa: Belgium has a particular, and outsized, colonial history in Africa, the 20th century era of which is intimately intertwined with the corporate history of Sabena. Here, near the height of the Belgian Airlines extent, the flag carrier flew to fifteen cities south of the Sahara. 

In west Africa, flights from Zaventem National Airport reached Dakar, Conakry, Abidjan, Niamey, Kano and Douala, with interlinking onward service to Monrovia and Lagos. Further into Central Africa lay Kinshasa, surely Sabena's most important African destination, linked from Niamey, Douala in Africa and Brussels and Athens in Europe. It is notable that no other Congolese city was served. 

Athens served as a supra-Mediterranean station for flights to East Africa: Nairobi and Entebbe connected non-stop from Greece, as did an ultra-long haul to Johannesburg. All three were also served non-stop from the home base. Interestingly, Uganda's main airport was also directly connected to Vienna. Kigali and Bujumbura, the capitals of Belgium's other central African former colonies, were only served from Nairobi, with Dar Es Salaam also linked in. 

Special thanks again to Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal) for allowing reuse under creative commons licensing. 

Alitalia: The African Routes & Schedules, 1973.

A detail of the previous post, originally put up at Airline Memorabilia, showing the astonishing array of African routes operated by Alitalia forty-one years ago.

The jagged cartography reveals a busy system, with almost all flights were out of Rome, although the second line to Dakar links directly to Milan, which continued on to South America. The rest of West Africa is well served by individual flights to Abidjan, Accra, and Lagos, with an onward connection to Douala. Airline Memorabilia scanned in the full schedule, which shows a quad-jet fleet of DC-8s, B707s and even VC-10s humming across the Sahara to seventeen cities.

East Africa was even more thoroughly interconnected, with four routes from Rome, including the curious Athens-Entebbe-Lusaka; two which covered the colonial connections to the Horn of Africa: Jeddah-Asmara-Addis Ababa and Khartoum-Addis Ababa-Mogadishu, and finally a plunging trans-Indian Ocean route: Nairobi-Dar Es Salaam-Antananarivo-Mauritius. In the schedule below, a footnote helpfully details that connections are available at Dar to/from the Comores Islands.

The cone of Africa was by comparison only lightly linked, with a Nairobi-Johannesburg and a Kinshasa-Johannesburg route. The third link to Jo'berg, a long-haul nonstop from Fiumicino.

Of all these cities, Alitalia only serves Accra and Lagos today.

South African Airways: African International Network, 2013

As detailed in the previous post, the inflight magazine for South African Airways lists the airline's network across Africa, showing flights to Dar Es Salaam, Nairobi, Mauritius, Blantyre, Lilongwe, Entebbe, Maputo, Brazzaville, Pointe-Noire, Bujumbura, Kigali, and Libreville, exclusively with narrow-body A319 and B737-800 aircraft, except for the route to nearby Mauritius which uses the quad-engined wide body A340. Long-haul routes to four other continents, shown on the bottom half of the page, are detailed in the following post.

Kenya Airways: The Eastern and Southern Africa Routes, 2011.

A detail of the previous post showing the Kenya Airways network stretching across eastern and Southern Africa: non-stops to Gaborone and Johannesburg, and a inter-linked network of services to Lusaka, Lilongwe, Harare and Maputo, whereas Nampula in northern Mozambique is served non-stop. There are also direct flights to Lubumbashi and Ndola in the trans-national copperbelt, and flights stretching into the Indian Ocean to Antananarivo, Moroni and Victoria in the Seychelles. Zanzibar is connected to Mombasa, Bujumbura and Kigali are also linked. Flights northwards include Juba and in the Horn of Africa Addis Ababa and Djibouti.

Nairobi Departures, April 30, 2013 #1

 The departures from about 5:30pm on April 30, 2013 at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi, Kenya, showing a pair take-offs for the Gulf, with Emirates to Dubai and Qatar to Doha, followed by a bank of long-hauls to Europe, starting with British Airways to London Heathrow, Swiss to Zurich, Brussels Airlines to Zavantem in Brussels, followed by a South African flight to Johannesburg and a Turkish flight to Istanbul. Both Kenya Airways and SAA have later flights to Jo'berg as well, and there is a second departure to Doha later on. These wide body flights are interspersed with regional services by Kenya, Air Uganda, and others to regional capitals such as Juba, Dar Es Salaam, and Entebbe Airport outside of Kampala.

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.

Ethiopian Airlines: The East African Destinations, Spring 2013

Of the more than four dozen African cities that Ethiopian serves, it is particularly strong in its home region of East Africa.

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 African Network, 2013

Troubled, loss-making state carrier South African Airways, whose past has been covered extensively on Timetablist, continues to dominate its home continent as one of the largest African carriers. As shown in this flyer circulated at Munich airport earlier this year, the airline still has success connecting passengers via its antipodean hub at Johannesburg OR Tambo, which remains Africa's busiest airport.

Beyond the southernmost cone, detailed in the next post, SAA serves sixteen cities in Western, Central and Eastern Africa, from Dakar to Dar Es Salaam, including smaller airports such as Brazzaville, Bujumbura, Cotonou and Pointe-Noire. However, the airline by-passes the Sahel and Sahara on its way to its new remaining European gateways.