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.

Ghana Airways: Düsseldorf-Accra and all of West Africa, c.1990

A cartoon DC-10 smiles from a German-language Ghana Airways sticker celebrating Ghana Airways service from Düsseldorf to Accra sometime around 1990. The state airline stretched from Westphalia to West Africa nearly until its demise, serving the burgeoning immigrant communities of the Rhine region as one of the airline's few European destinations (London Gatwick was consistently the other, which it sometimes flew to via Germany).

Ghana Airways Network, October 1966

Four years on the map featured in yesterday's post and Ghana Airways has indeed entered the jet era with its flagship VC-10 shown atop this schedule, whilst running routes from Accra to London, Zürich, Cairo and Beirut. Rome is also shown on the above network, but is unlabeled. The Soviet venture has been dropped, it seems, as Moscow and Prague are no longer shown, and the other north African destinations are likewise absent.

The West African run remains, as does the route to Ouagadougou, although not Bamako.  Kumasi is now shown. Additionally, a British United connection from Monrovia to London via the Canaries is shown in a dashed line.

Khartoum is also gone, but in its place are "proposed routes" stretching across the belt of Africa, from Lagos to Douala, Bangui, Entebbe, and Nairobi, splitting there to terminate at Dar Es Salaam and Mogadishu. Leopoldville is also linked in with this planned expansion. Whether these destinations were ever reached is unclear; a timetable from 1972 shows none of these central African cities.

This item has been reposted from the incredible website Timetable Images, as is from the collection of Bjorn Larsson. The Timetablist would like to thank Timetable Images and Mr. Larsson for generously allowing reposting. 

Ghana Airways: The External Services, November 1962

During the same time frame as yesterday's newspaper advert, boasting of a Second-generation jet service from Ghana Airways, the above map showed the extent of the airline's international network, or as it uniquely says here, its "External Services."

The route includes the classic West African littoral ply from Lagos to Dakar via Abidjan, Monrovia (Robertsfield), Freetown, Conakry, and Bathurst. Also included in West Africa is hops north to Ouagadougou and Bamako, the second of which interestingly continues north to Tunis, then Zürich followed by Prague, and finally ending at Moscow. This was the era when President Kwame Nkrumah was courting Eastern overtures as well as Western in the immediate post-independence period. This triangulation would manifest itself most visibly at Ghana Airways, which received a handful of Illyushin Il-18s, as can be seen at lower left underneath the Dougla DC-3s and in adjacent corners from its other fleet types, the British Vickers Viscount and Bristol Brittania. The Soviet props were employed only for Ghana Airway's intra-African routes, such as the stretches to Khartoum and Cairo which then went on to Beirut on a weekly basis.

But Ghana's back was not turned away from its colonial parent, as can be seen from the air company's dual routes to London, one via Tripoli and Rome, the other direct non-stop, the longest route for the company at the time.

This item has been reposted from the incredible website Timetable Images, as is from the collection of Bjorn Larsson. The Timetablist would like to thank Timetable Images and Mr. Larsson for generously allowing reposting. 

Ghana Airways Chooses the VC-10, c.1962

A wonderful vintage newspaper advertisement from some time in the early 1960s, as Ghana Airways had announced their intention to purchase three Vickers Aircraft VC-10s. Note that the advert states "built by British Aircraft Corporation" as Vickers was coming into a government-pressured nationalization scheme to form BAC. The tagline, "projecting the Clean-wing shape of the future," underscores the delightful optimism of the announcement.

The 2-page spread above is dominated by the broad airliner zooming across the sheet, presumably on a future flight between London Heathrow and Accra Kotoka. 

The Inauguration of Ghana Airways, 1958

Ghana Airways had a long history following this cover issue, reaching as far as Baltimore-Washington with its DC-10s. Despite a heart-felt following, the airline ceased to operate some years ago. It is now followed by Ghana International Airlines, with B757 service to Düsseldorf and London-Gatwick routes. Although this envelope was addressed to the Ghana Philatelic Agency on Wall Street in New York, the inaugural flight was almost surely to Heathrow Airport.