Abidjan: Evening Departures, 23 March 2017

Air Côte d'Ivoire naturally dominates the departures board at Abidjan's Felix Houphouët-Boigny International Airport, the airline's base and the principal gateway to the country. See we see an evening departures list for a 2-1/2 hour window from 18:00 to about 20:30—although the noon flight to Conakry has been massively delayed, it seems.

At the six o'clock hour, one of the airline's handful of domestic operations takes off with a flight to San Pedro, the cocoa port in the southwest of the country, near the Liberia border (first featured on the Timetablist with this post). The 7-8pm block features a half dozen of the airline's regional flights, starting with the longest haul of the HF schedule, to Libreville with onward service to Brazzaville. Fifteen minutes later the flight for Douala leaves, which then terminates at N'Djamena, Chad. Nearer routes take up the bottom of the hour: Cotonou, Lagos, and neighboring Accra and Lomé.

From 8 o'clock, the long-haul departures begin for other airlines. Here we see the flight on Brussels Airlines to Zavantem via Ouagadougou, and the non-stop to Nairobi. A little later, the Conakry flight had fallen off the board, and South African Airways SA057 to Johannesburg with a stop in Accra, appeared. 

Kenya Airways: The Asian Network, April 2016

The eastward route map of Kenya Airways shows the airline's on-going presence across Asia, with nonstops to Dubai, Mumbai, and Bangkok with onward service to Hong Kong, and its newest service, to Guangzhou via Hanoi. At a time of highly-publicized, humiliating troubles for the airline, after a decade of ambitious growth and fleet renewal, it appears that KQ's Asian network is still going strong.

This portion of the map also provides some detail on the airline wide-range connections across the east African coast, from Djibouti to Dzaoudzi. Also visible is the airline's new route to Bangui, the development that started this series of posts.

The map also includes a large variety of codeshare operations, which, as this blog has argued recently, is seldom helpful in a complex route map. While oneWorld partner flights across Asia, connecting to Seoul on Korean or Shanghai on China Southern, are somewhat illustrative, the services to Australia on Etihad are particularly odd, as Kenya Airways does not serve Abu Dhabi (the airline ended flights there in 2014). The Nairobi—Mauritius—Perth trans-Indian Ocean link is interesting.

Kenya Airways: Africa in Focus, March 2016

This route map showing Kenya Airways's vast operations across Africa can be seen as something of a key to the graphic in the advertisement shown in yesterday's post, although, strangely, Bangui itself has been left off the map. Routes span outward from Nairobi, naturally, although KQ continues to maintain something of a mini-hub in Accra to connect to Freetown and Monrovia, and Bamako is linked in with Dakar. There is likewise a set of interlinking routes in Southern Africa, connecting Lilongwe with Lusaka, Lusaka with Harare, and Harare with Livingston, at Victoria Falls.

Kenya Airways: The Return of Bangui, November 2015

The last two posts have brought us to the Sahelian-Sudan region, a generally quiet corner of aviation history. Back in 2015, Kenya Airways, generally one of the powerhouses of the sub-Saharan skies, re-launched its flight to Bangui, in the Central African Republic, which it had suspended for more than three years due to the political crisis in the country, which resulted in U.N. intervention. KQ maintains direct flights from Nairobi JKIA to nearly two-thirds of the capitals of Africa; its many destinations are not labeled here and, confusingly are shown slightly out of place: Dakar a bit too north of where it should be, Johannesburg not quite south enough, Maputo too inland. It is easier in this map to see Jeddah, Dubai, Paris, London, Amsterdam, and even Mahe and Antananarivo. With the route network misaligned with the underlying geography, many cities can only be guessed at. 

Dubai: Departures from Terminal 1, January 2015 (cont.)

Continuing from the previous post, the second of two screens-shots gets us from the late noon hour until mid-afternoon. The schedule continues to be dominated by regional and subcontinental flights, with the addition of MEA to Beirut and Royal Jordanian to Amman. PIA has three more operations in the afternoon, and Mahan Air has a second flight to Tehran. 

More exotic flights are sprinkled throughout the time block. Surely the most remarkable is SyrianAir to Latakia, as it is almost unbelievable that the state carrier continues to field its single A320 across the region as much of the country burns. Elsewhere, we find Azerbaijan Airlines to Baku, and TAROM to Bucharest, here referred to only at "Otopeni Intl." The last of the board shows two flight to Moscow: the first on Transaero to "Vnukovo," in what would be the last few months of that enterprise's existence, and a second that at the moment shows a Kenya Airways flight number but is, of course, an Aeroflot operation to Sheremetyevo, which is not specified as the destination airport.

Ethiopian Airlines: Now Flying to Niamey Four Times Weekly, November 2013

Ethiopian Airlines leads the pack of pan-continental African airlines, a highly-competitive field which includes South African and Kenya Airways (and which faces increasingly stiff challenges from Emirates in particular). Niger's capital, Niamey, was one of the few West African capitals that Ethiopian didn't already serve; this was rectified last November with the introduction of four weekly flights, although not using one of the airline's sleek new Dreamliners as shown in this advert. ET937 does however use a respectably large B757 for the transcontinental service, which continues on to neighboring Ouagadougou, as does a number of other connections such as Air France and Turkish.

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.

Kenya Airways: the Africa Network, November 2011

From Kenya Airways in-flight magazine, recalling on older Timetablist posts showing earlier maps. KQ's West African network links the Nairobi hub with N'Djamena, onward to Cotonou, a non-stop to Lagos, connections to Freetown, Monrovia and Abidjan via Accra; a non-stop to Ouagadougou, and to Dakar via Bamako.

In Central Africa, Bangui, Yaounde, Douala and Malabo are variously interlinked and there are non-stops to Libreville, Luanda, Brazzaville and Kinshasa. Eastern and Southern African destinations will be discussed in the subsequent post.

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.

Ethiopian: Three times weekly from Addis Ababa to Ndola, April 2013

Ethiopian's neck-and-neck race against Kenya Airways to cover all of Africa has spread to a second airport in Zambia: the northern town of Ndola, gateway to Zambia's famed copperbelt region. Ethiopian serves the town non-stop from Addis Ababa's Bole Airport three times per week.

Ethiopian Airlines: Three times per week from Addis Ababa to Blantyre, April 2013

Ethiopian Airlines has been in fierce competition with its east African rival, Kenya Airways, to connect the continent through its hub at Addis Ababa's Bole Airport. Earlier this year, it launched flights to Blantyre, Malawi's commercial capital and second largest city, which is served by only handful of airlines. Malawian aviation has suffered greatly this year due to the indefinite suspension of Air Malawi. 

Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta Airport International Departures, 30 April 2013, #2

The second screen of the international departures board for NBO on the night of 30 April shows activity through the night at this 24-hour airport; no restrictions on small-hour activity, perhaps because there is so little.

In the 35 minutes before midnight, Kenya Airways has two long-hauls: to Guangzhou via Bangkok, and London-Heathrow. There is a shorter flight to Bujumbura and Kigali.

SWISS leaves for Zürich, one of the last African services for the airline which formerly served a dozen sub-Saharan cities. After an almost two-and-a-half hour pause, Brussels Airlines leaves for Brussels via Kigali. Turkish Airlines takes a dead-zone departure time to fly to Istanbul, a curious time slot, and just before sunrise, Ethiopian operates the first of several daily flights to Addis Ababa.

By daylight, activity picks up. KQ leaves for Johannesburg, and follows in the next hour with departures to Dar Es Salaam, Juba, Yaounde, and a link to Lilongwe and Lusaka. Air Uganda's first flight to Entebbe leaves at the same time. African Express leaves for Berbera and Mogadishu at 7am.

Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta Airport International Departures, 30 April 2013, #1

The departure board at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at 9PM in the 30th of April of this year, showing a squadron of flights across Africa, as well as long-hauls to Europe and Asia.

Of the 13 flights shown, 8 are within Africa, and 5 of those are on Kenya Airways: to Gaborone, Botswana, Johannesburg, and a flight to both Lusaka and Harare, all in Southern Africa. Kenya always flies to nearby Entebbe, one of three airlines offering flights to Uganda's main airport late in the evening, the other being African Express and Air Uganda. there is also a KQ service to Dar Es Salaam at 10:30, an hour after Precision Air's service to the Tanzanian capital.

Outside of Africa, Kenya Airways has evening flights to Mumbai and Dubai, the latter with onward service to Hong Kong, while Emirates has a non-stop to Dubai ten minutes later. This is followed by the 11:15 flight to London Heathrow on British Airways. The KLM flight to Amsterdam, leaving at 22:25, is the only other European flight.

Kenya Airways KQ508, Accra to Monrovia, November 2011

The return leg of yesterday's post, shown on a different screen-shot of Kenya Airways very advanced in-flight video map. A late-model Kenya Airways B737 operates as KQ508 flying from Accra Kotoka to Monrovia's Roberts International Airport in Liberia (having originated in Nairobi). The flight passes directly over, but does not stop in Abidjan.

Kenya Airways: KQ509, Monrovia to Accra, November 2011

A screen shot from Kenya Airway's fantastically three-dimension inflight map, in this case showing a late-model B737 wing its way down the West African coast as KQ509 from Monrovia's Roberts International to Accra's Kotoka International non-stop, flying over Abidjan and pass several lesser Ivorian cities. A video cartography far better than the standard geovisual programming of many much larger international airlines.

Kenya Airways Destinations, 2011 (#2)

The vast reach of Kenya Airways, the 21st century Queen of Africa's skies, is reflected in this index of cities served from the back of a boarding pass from mid-2011. Major hubs such as Addis Ababa, Lagos and Johannesburg are mixed with smaller capitals such as Ouagadougou, Yaoundé, and Brazzaville, and rarer airports such as Moroni, referred to here as Comoros. Dubai, Mumbai, and other key connections in Asia and Europe are also included (The previous post labels the other destinations listed here).

Kenya Airways Destinations, 2011

The back Kenya Airways boarding passes in mid-2011 boasted of that airline's expanding reach. An exhaustive array of African arrival points, from Cotonou and Monrovia in the West, to Bangui, N'Djamena and Libreville in Central Africa, to Ndola, Lubumbashi and Lilongwe to the south, as well as Indian ocean island airports such as Antananarivo, Mayotte and Seychelles added with Juba, Bujumbura, and Malindi in its own backyard. These and others are intermixed with an increasingly impressive index of intercontinental entrepôts, including Guangzhou and Muscat. The next posts records the remainder of the more than 40 cities arranged here.

Accra Kotoka Airport: Tuesday Evening Departures, November 2011

In the evening, most of the long-haul carriers return to their home bases from Accra's Kotoka International Airport, as this segment of the Tuesday schedule from November 2011 shows. These include the northerly, European carriers, such as KLM and British Airways, as well as the somewhat rarer Alitalia departure just prior to midnight, one the Italian carrier's few remaining sub-Saharan services.

Also here are more easterly-based airlines, such as Turkish (via Lagos), Egyptair, Emirates and MEA, the latter routing their Beirut service via Kano. There is also a southerly route on South African Airways which leaves for Johannesburg at 11PM.

Accra Kotoka Airport: Tuesday Midday Departures, November 2011

The middle of Tuesday last November at Accra's Kotoka International Airport shows several various West African connections, including ASKY to Lomé, Air Nigeria to Monrovia, Kenya Airways to Freetown (originating in Nairobi), Emirates to Abidjan (a continuation from Dubai), and United Air Lines to Lagos (having started in Washington). ASKY flies to Freetown and Banjul at mid-afternoon, after Egyptair's departure for Cairo.

Accra Kotoka Airport Monday Evening Departures, November 2011

Continuing from the previous post, the Monday evening departures table shows a host of intercontinental carriers leaving Accra for distant destinations in Europe and elsewhere. This includes both Kotoka's traditional standbys, KLM to Amsterdam and British Airways to London, as well as new-comers such as Emirates to Dubai at 5:30, Turkish Airlines to Istanbul, United Airlines to Washington Dulles, TAP to Lisbon, and Afriqiyah Airways to Tripoli.

Also seen here are southern hemispheric services, specifically South African Airways non-stop to Johannesburg and Air Namibia to Jo'berg via Windhoek. There are only a handful of regional departures to Lagos in the late afternoon as well as an Air Ivoire flight at 8PM to Lomé.