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.

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.

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.

South African Airways: the Southern African destinations 2013

Following from the previous post, this promotional brochure shows the ease of connecting to the southern cone of Africa from South African Airways's gateways in Europe: Munich, Frankfurt, and London Heathrow, via Johannesburg. With the map superimposed, these long-haul legs seem mercifully short. Cities in Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique and Malawi are shown, as well as the airline's many domestic destinations. In most cases, especially outside of South Africa, the proposition is to fly from Europe to OR Tambo, passing over a final destination, before tracking back to reach it on a local connection.

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.

Air Zimbabwe Schedule from Harare, 1997

The full schedule of Air Zimbabwe services from Harare in 1997 shows 17 destinations on at least two, possibly three continents. The typical timetable handbook format, used around the world by many airlines, often presents some curious itineraries: as in this instance it is difficult to contemplate such a volume of passengers between Zimbabwe and, say, Salt Lake City, or Tampa, or Klagerfurt, or Barbados, to warrant taking up the space (and expending the printing costs).

This is particularly true as the state carrier at the time seemed to serve only Frankfurt and London Gatwick (interestingly via Larnaca) beyond Africa, aside a somewhat curious Harare-Perth-Sydney service, with a UM flight number but operated by a B747. As there is no other source which records this venture, it suggests that Air Zim was wishfully assigning a codeshare as its own metal.

A decade later, the airline's schedule would pivot away from Antipodean and Anglophone areas and orient itself along the Africa-Asia-China axis  (as seen yesterday) which has been a major story of the 21st century.

This item is borrowed from the incredible blog airline-memorabilia.blogspot.com which uncovered this 15-year old gem. The Timetablist is indebted to the Airline Memorabilia Blog for its continued support and the privilege of reposting these timetable pages. 

Air Zimbabwe Network, 1998

An academic airline illustration, from the January 2000 issue of the Journal of Transport Geography, in a paper titled, "Air Transport Operations and Policy in Zimbabwe, 1980-1998" by Chris Mutambirwa and Brian Turton.

The map isn't a graphic feat, its dry two-toned appearance fitting for the journalism at hand. The map shows not only current routes of Air Zimbabwe in 1998, but those such as Harare-Maputo and Victoria Falls-Windhoek that were withdrawn in 1997. The connecting lines also note the number of weekly flights per route. Gaborone is strangely out of place.

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.

Kenya Airways: The African Network, mid-2010

Kenya Airways' rapid expansion across its home continent is evident in the great breadth and depth of this route map, especially in comparison with the same article from just a year previous.

Kenya is still predominant across its home region, connecting neighboring East African cities, but with a large number of southbound routes, including a new link to Gaborone, Botswana.

Although not the focus of this and the following post, redlines reaching the page's edges show links to Europe and Asia. The three European destinations are suggested to be above the top of the page, although both Amsterdam and Paris are located on the visible portion of Europe.

The next post details the route networks which stretch across the Central and Western portions of the continent.

Zambian Airways: Domestic and Regional Routes, c.2008

Via this website, showing the full-extent of the now-defunct Zambian Airways, around the height of its operation in perhaps 2008. Regional operations, apparently with two decrepit B737-200s, reached as far as Harare, Lilongwe, and Lubumbashi from Lusaka, and operated a second base at the center of the copperbelt, Ndola.

This airline is unrelated to the much older, larger, but equally moribund Zambia Airways, which used to stretch from New York to Bombay, with dozens of destinations in between.

Although descendant of an aviation enterprise stretching back to 1948, the formally-named Zambian Airway's reach and lifetime was much more limited. Having come in to the national name in 1998, in the wake of Zambia Airway's 1994 collapse, Zambian Airways itself suspended service in January 2009, which led to the government filing suit against the airline the following month. Zambia today is without a state carrier, although the privately-held Zambezi Airways reportedly covers southern Africa from Lusaka.

Air Zimbabwe: The Worldwide Network, c.2006

Via the Travel House UK website comes this undated, computer-generated artifact. Only Africa is shown (and its unclear why the map of Zimbabwe is repeated at left), with red arrows angling out to destinations in Asia and the UK.

Of uncertain vitage, it can be at least cross-referenced with the Timetable Image's archive of the March-October 2006 AirZim schedule, which included once-weekly Dubai-Lubumbashi-Harare and Harare-Singapore-Beijing jaunts (using the same ageing B767 that also reached Gatwick). The B737 reached as far as Mauritius. All but Beijing and London are today erstwhile, as Air Zimbabwe continues to suffer, its zigzag-striped Boeings as pariah as the regime that owns it.

The latest news out this month is a bizarre report that the strike-ridden, cash-strapped, trade-embargoed airline will be acquiring new Airbus jets. This just weeks after pilots refused to operate the current, ancient fleet until they were paid back wages, and amid talk of a need for either a government bailout, privatization, or liquidation.

Ethiopian Airlines: The Eastern & Southern African Routes, 2011

Ethiopian Airlines has long been the premier carrier of the African continent. Prior to the establishment of many state carriers (or even the independence of some African nations), the wings of the Lion of Judah was lauded for its technical proficiency and service.

The airline has not let time, and the development of other formidable African airlines (especially neighboring Kenya Airways), diminish its presence of the continent or its standing as a global carrier. Many African countries lack a home airline or flag carrier, and in the rapid consolidation of airlines around global alliances, it is the largest operations that seem destined to retain their identities. Ethiopian is unquestionably well-positioned as a regional, continental, and global airline.

Over the next four posts, Timetablist will detail Ethiopian Airlines current planet-wide network, which reaches four continents, including an impressive presence in Europe and growing service to China.

In this first post, the headquarters hub at Addis Ababa's Bole Airport pulls in passengers from across Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa.

UTA French Airlines: Central & Southern Africa Destinations

Another detail from UTA's worldwide map from 1989, part of Flickr user caribb's collection. Even thought France didn't have any colonies in the southern half of the continent, and there isn't a francophone city between Kinshasa and Antananarivo, UTA flew to a number of southern African capitals where no French airline flies today. Libreville, Brazzaville, Kinshasa are no surprise (and are still connected to Paris), and Luanda and Johannesburg have economic reasons for still being served from CDG, but anglophone Lilongwe, Lusaka, Gaborone, Windhoek and lusophone Maputo are surprising.

Timetablist would like to thank caribb (Doug from Montreal) for generously allowing the reuse of these images under creative commons license terms.

Air France/KLM: African Network, Winter 2010/11: Codeshare destinations

Selected destinations served by Sky-team partner Kenya Airways in code-share are shown in red. Nairobi has become a significant hub for the alliance.

South African Airways: Worldwide, November 2009

This copper-and-chrome worldview shows the rainbow nation's reach via its flag carrier, with routes to North and South America, Australia, and Asia, as well as a dozen routes across its home continent.

British Airways, Africa and Southwest Asia, Autumn 1999

Like every other carrier, British Airways has scrapped a handful of its African routes in the last decade. Here Abidjan, Durban, Harare, Lilongwe, and Windhoek are seen, which have since been dropped from the BA network. One destination missing from the map is Abuja.
Note also the Central Asian cities, Bishkek, Almaty, and Tashkent, and the curious location of Ashhgabat, incorrectly shown here south of Tehran. None of these routes lasted to the present. The Caucasian cities, Baku, Tblisi and Yerevan, are also no longer served; the post-Soviet exuberance was not enough to support British Airways's expansion into the CIS.

Kenya Airways: The African Network, mid-2009

Kenya Airways has positioned itself as the pan-African carrier, with a brand-new fleet connecting West, Central, and Southern Africa from its stronghold in East Africa, based in Nairobi. By 2008, the airline maintained several European routes, as well as connections to Dubai, Mumbai, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou, showing the importance of China's connection to Africa. Kenya continues to fill in its African system, recently adding Libreville, Brazzaville, and Antananarivo.