Arrivals at O.R. Tambo, August 2017

A mid-day Arrivals board for O.R. Tambo from a week or so after the previous posts, showing an all-African schedule at the continent's largest airport. Most are operated by hometown carrier South African Airways, and most flights are from the southern African region; indeed, the schedule represents almost every nation in the SADC league, with Gaborone, Botswana appearing three times, from the first, third, and second-to-last flight. Air Botswana operates that third flight, as well as one before it to remote Francistown.

There are other regional connections from Maseru, in Lesotho, the nation that is famously completely surrounded by South Africa; other nearby capitals of almost every other country that borders South Africa Maputo, Windhoek, Blantyre, and Lusaka flights by SAA, and a rare Air Zimbabwe flight from Harare is unsurprisingly delayed. Further afield, there is the trans-ocean service on Air Mauritius arriving just before noon.  The more distant continental connections are the ubiquitous rivalry of Kenya Airways from Nairobi, Ethiopian from Addis Ababa, and Fastjet from Dar Es Salaam—that low-cost start-up's longest route. 

International Departures from O.R. Tambo Airport, July 2017 (2)

An update of half an hour from the last post: the Asian long-hauls of Emirates and Singapore are delayed, while Qatar Airways is leaving on time for Doha. Ethiopian seems like it may not make it out on schedule, as the gates still open 25 minutes prior to pushback.

Another block of near and far intra-African flights on South African Airways has filled up the 3-4PM block: Maseru, Lesotho; Lagos, Nigeria, Douala, Cameroon, Maputo, Mozambique, Nairobi, Kenya, and Manzini, in Swaziland. After that, an Air Botswana short-hop to Gaborone (see also this post from the previous week). 

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: 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. 

Imperial Airways, 1937: The African Routes

As with its trans-Asian operations shown yesterday, the technology available to Imperial Airways in the early age of aviation necessitated a series of regular way stations for the royal charter's southerly system spanning Africa.

After the upper Nile, the line made its way to Khartoum, whence it splits, with one line turning to the west: Kano—Lagos—Accra and finally Takoradi, which only has domestic links today. There must have been pitstops in the drylands of French Central Africa but these are unnamed here; the paths of the green routes, connecting Algeria and Morocco to Niger and then the Congo, and reaching across to Madagascar, suggest French operations.

Continuing to follow the Nile south, the Cairo-to-Cape line stopped at Malakal, toady in South Sudan, then fanned across British East Africa in a complex web which appears to shown that one set of services remained inland along the Great Rift, passing through Nairobi on the way to Lusaka, Salisbury (today Harare) and Bulawayo in Rhodesia, and  then finally ending at Johannesburg. 

Another schedule reached the Swahili coast at Mombasa—Dar Es Salaam—(Ma)lindi and coastal Mozambique, with a bridge connection through Nyasaland at Blantyre, passing through Lourenço Marques (today Maputo) to terminate at Durban. The unlabeled green lines with the Union clearly suggest an early-stage South African Airways, reaching both Cape Town and Windhoek. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

Linhas Aereas de Moçambique: Domestic Routes, 2012

Continuing from yesterday's post, the current domestic network of Mozambique's flag carrier shown via an attractively spare Adobe Illustrator job, found on its website. Flights fan out from the capital in the south to nearly every one of its eight national destinations, but every city is connected to at least two others, with several routes running out from the regional centers. Connections criss-cross on the belt at Beira and Quelimane, reaching to the northern capitals of Nampula and Pemba. A route from Tete to distant Lichinga crosses over Malawian airspace.

Linhas Aereas de Moçambique Routes, 2012

The well-tended website of Mozambique's state carrier, Linhas Aereas de Moçambique, features a handsomely spare route map. Although the online image shows the entire globe, LAM's routes are almost entirely confined to southern Africa as shown here. It is therefore curious that Asia and the Americas are included, as LAM serves neither and in fact only recently was able to re-enter the ex-African market with its return to Lisbon this year. There is a strong emphasis on not only other continents but connecting carriers' services, which quite strangely are shown in solid lines on the map, while the airline's own network is only depicted in faint dotted lines: the effect is to blur distinctions and make LAM's own operations diminished.

While the scope of LAM's presence is small, it impressively flies internationally from what appears to be no less than eight of its ten domestic airports: flies to Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam come out of northeastern Nampula and Pemba, whereas Joanesburgo is served from five cities. There is also a nonstop from Maputo to Cape Town. Somewhat strangely, it appears that the flight to Luanda originates from Inhambane, and the flight to Lisbon on LAM's own wings appears to stop in Beira-- perhaps these are cartographic errors?

Linhas Aereas de Moçambique: Maputo-Lisbon-Berlinin, 1983

Staying in southern Africa: Timetablist has featured a very similar envelope in the past, recognizing Linhas Aereas de Moçambique's service 1983 to Berlin from Maputo, via Lisbon. However, this particular item seems to be principally introducing not just the route but also the aircraft, the Primeiro Voo of a DC-10, which here roars to a landing, facing the viewer straight on. The cancellation stamp is impressed twice, featuring LAM's handsome spread-wing songbird logo. Note also the Fokker friendship in the colors of LAM's ancestor, DETA, on the postage stamp.

LAM has survived to the present day but is shamefully not currently serving Europe, due to the European Union's categorization that no carriers certified by Mozambique's aviation regulatory bodies may enter European airspace. However, given Mozambique's booming economy, demand for intercontinental airline seats is surely rising, and perhaps LAM's fortunes will rise with it.

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.

Zambia Airways Routes, c.1980

A vintage (though undated) Zambia Airways timetable cover features a route map which fascinates with where the state carrier both did and did not fly. The only ex-African routes are to Europe, with non stops to London and Rome, the latter which branches off firstly to Frankfurt and then, bizarrely, to Belgrade. While East Africa's capitals are included, neither Rhodesia nor South Africa are served, presumably blockaded due to apartheid. No domestic routes are shown, aside from service from Livingston, at Victoria Falls. Maputo's Portuguese name is provided in parenthesis. The farthest eastern destination is Mauritius; the airline had yet to reach Bombay or Jeddah. There are no West African services, much less than flagship route to New York.

TAP Air Portugal Network, 1974

The last from this month's series from the remarkable Flight International Magazine archives available at flight global.com comes this magazine-made map of TAP Air Portugal's four-continent network on the eve of independence for the Lusophone colonies of Africa. Maputo is still Lourenço Marques, and for that matter Salisbury is not yet Harare. Interestingly, the caption of the map mention's prospects of 'improved relations with black Africa' in hopes of ending the "bulge" route which avoids banned West African airspace--similar to the constrictions that Apartheid-era South African Airways endured.

Interestingly, the mid-70s TAP is thin on its routes to Brazil, merely two destinations, with no service to Sao Paulo, Natal, Belem, or Brasilia. Recife is misspelled-- merely the most glaring cartographic fault, which lazily plots northeastern US cities far inland and European capitals at random.

Luanda appears as a major scissor station, linking the homeland with five southern African cities, as well as a boomerang connection to the tiny São Tomé e Príncipe archipelago. A handful of North Atlantic routes stretch from Lisbon and the Açores to New York, Montreal, and Boston, where large communities from Portugal, Cape Verde, and the Azores reside. Direct service to the US East Coast is offered from both Ponta Delgada (here referred to as Miguel--on the island of São Miguel) and Terceira, as SATA International still does today.

Today, TAP has more routes to Brazil, and maintains its colonial connections (but not its web of services) in Africa, but has all but abandoned the trans-Atlantic trade.

The following post will detail TAP's European services shown above.

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.

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.

TAAG Angolan Airlines: The African Routes, 2011

While TAAG serves several underserved African cities, particularly Bangui and Sao Tome, there are a number of gaps in its African network to be filled in, including several of the continent's most important air hubs, namely Nairobi, Lagos, Addis Ababa, Accra, Entebbe, Cairo and Dakar. Tiny Lusophone Bissau would also be a possible addition.

Luanda has the potential to be a conduit for traffic between Western and Southern Africa, funneling West Africans into the continent's southern cone. But this has yet to materialize. Presumably, TAAG functions on premium origin and destination traffic to fuel its booming economy.

The previous post shows TAAG's global network. The following post details TAAG's domestic services.