Oman Air Route Network, December 2015: The Eastward Routes

Continuing from the previous post, Oman Air has followed the general strategy of all other Gulf carriers, by provided an extensive medium and long-haul network across South and Southeast Asia, best understood as serving the constant flow of labor migrants from the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan into its home market and across the Gulf region.

Oman Air has yet to take on the business hubs of East Asia, although since this map was published in December 2015, the carrier has launched flights to Guangzhou, just last month.

Qatar Airways Route Network, November 2016: South Asia

Like its Gulf rivals, Qatar Airways has blanketed South Asia with direct service to more than two-dozen cities: seven in Pakistan and thirteen in India. Too many to label here, but like Emirates and Etihad, Qatar acts as a de-facto state carrier not for the Gulf region but for the Indian subcontinent. 

Etihad Route Map, September 2016: South Asia

Like its Gulf siblings, Etihad and the UAE rely on commercial, trade, and labor links with South Asia for primary sustenance. Abu Dhabi's state carrier therefore serves the region respectably, from Karachi to Kozhikode to Kolkata to Kathmandu, if, again, not quite as exhaustively as its rival Emirates, it has recently upgraded its flights to Mumbai to its double-deck A380, one of only five cities in the network that see such girth. The next post will look further east to its Australiasian services. 

RAK Airways Destinations, c.2009

The a web graphic from the erstwhile RAK Airways, showing what was probably the maximum extent of that airline's reach: a 7,000-km span across the Arab world to southern Asia, from Cairo to Calicut to Chittagong. The national airline of the emirate of Ras Al-Khaimah seemed to be marketing feeder traffic for guest workers throughout the region, sourced mainly from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Egypt. The airline's short Wikipedia page recounts the interesting saga of its launch, suspension, rebirth and second death, while the airline's Facebook page, last updated in December 2013 (shortly before the airline's final demise), has some nice photos of its pair of A320s during its 2.0 iteration. Scrolling back through the social media posts reveals that Amman and Kozhikode, not shown above, were part of the second generation. The airline's original website, meanwhile, now hosts a curious flow of long-form, contemplative text on contemporary travel. 

The airline's home base, Ras Al-Khaimah International Airport, has partially recovered from the collapse; it now hosts operations by low-cost Air Arabia and Air India Express to many of the same destinations as RAK Airways, as well as charter flights from Germany, Latvia, Poland and Russia to the hot-sand beach resorts of the northeastern United Arab Emirates. 

Air India: the Gulf Routes, c.2012

Air India has more routes to the Gulf than what remains of its European, North American, or nonexistent African network but still the coverage is spare. Cairo is not served, Kuwait is farmed out, and there is no direct service from such megacities as Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad or Amritsar (that latter three not even shown here) but only from the Keralan coastal centers of Kozhikode, Kochi, and Thiruvananthapuram.

Major Gulf hubs such as Doha and Bahrain are also absent. The label for Abu Dhabi is far removed from its dot, also. Everything about the contemporary Air India, a sad shadow of its former self, indicates an airline out of focus.

Oman Air: Worldwide Network, 2011: Detail #2: The Subcontinent

Oman Air is in all ways a smaller iteration of the Gulf's burgeoning supercarriers. This similarity includes an expansive array of destinations in its South Asian backyard. With far fewer seat-miles to the Subcontinent than its rivals, Oman Air nonetheless offers more than 15 destinations out of Muscat, catering especially to foreign contract workers and shopping trippers.

Please see the two previous posts for more about Oman Air's current network, worldwide and in the Middle East.