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. 

Royal Air Maroc: Domestic Destinations, 2011

Like its African network map, Royal Air Maroc doesn't designate the routes in its domestic network, although it operates significant bases at other major cities such as Rabat, Marrakesh, Tangier, Fez, and Agadir to both domestic and international destinations.

What's more notable is what the airline considers to be domestic: here, the realm of the kingdom clearly extends deep down the Saharan Atlantic coast well into territory claimed by the Sahrawi Republic. Tan-Tan is the southernmost RAM destination in Morocco itself; Laâyoune (styled by Timetablist by the more common El Aaiún) and Dakhla, the ancient Spanish whaling port of Villa Cisneros, are claimed by the breakaway movement.

Royal Air Maroc Network, November 1983

The state carrier of the Kingdom of Morocco has always had a uniquely-diverse network, with a strong presence in its home region of North and Western Africa, a dense array of flights across Western Europe, and a handful of long-range services overseas.

This is only more so today, but thirty years ago Royal Air Maroc already offered flights to half a dozen West African capitals, as far south as Libreville. All of them francophone except for tiny Malabo.

Francophonia features prominently across the network, linking seven cities in metropolitan France, from tiny Lille to Toulouse and Bordeaux. Much father afield, one of longest flights is to Montreal via New York, a route which the airline still serves today.

Interestingly, South America was also reached, with a single flight connecting Rio and Sao Paulo. At the eastern end of its extent, RAM's jets found their way to Damascus, Kuwait, and several other cities in the Middle East.

In this blood orange graphic (the larger background is a sunset photo), the Montreal-New York-Casablanca-Cairo-Jeddah route is emphasized in bold, for reasons unclear.

This image was derived from a post on Royal Air Maroc page of the encyclopedic Timetable Images blog. 

British Airways: The African Routes, c.2008

British Airways, a conservative carrier steeped in tradition, rarely makes changes, particularly to its unique route map illustration, which looks quite similar to this version from the beginning of the decade. 

The only changes are the loss of direct BA services to Harare, and the absence of the Dakar-Freetown route. The former is still on the map, but only as part of the South African-centered Comair network.

Since this printing, Dar Es Salaam dropped from the schedule just this past March, and only last week BA announced the end of its historic service to Lusaka-- two legacy routes to former colonies that can no longer be commercially justified.

Royal Air Maroc: Systemwide Route Map, April 1976

An astonishing vintage route map, a gem of the tremendous collection of the website Timetable Images. Its issue date of April 1976 could be guessed at from the styling alone: a shag-carpet, VW-bus interior striping of the continents that follows neither national boundaries nor time zones, but zigzags to its own groovy pattern. The coastlines of the landmass are geometrically simplified, squared-off while still showing smaller juts such as Crimea and Crete, Cornwall and Cape Cod.

This quadrangularity contrasts to the jet-black route lines. Frictionless, looping ribbons convex proudly from their true navigational path, making for easy reading on the map. Northern European Routes are pulled far out into the Atlantic; Southern European lines ply semicircles over the Sahara. Tripoli and Le Caire are linked by a fanciful arc which touches mainland Greece; Nouakchott, due north of Dakar, is connected to the Senegalese capital by a wide "C" shape.

The labels are in quintessential Microgramma typeface, both on the map and at what stands in for a legend: the spiraling emblem at the bottom left, featuring the Francophone names of the nations which Royal Air Maroc serves. Such a badge seems to be an award to mark this fantastic réseau as a classic achievement of route map graphics.

All this can be admired before even considering the routes themselves, of which there are several treasures: Lille is the sixth metropolitain city served; JFK is reached from both Casablanca and Tangier, before swooping north to terminate at Mirabel; the airline stretches as far east as Koweit.

As can be seen from previous posts, RAM has expanded rapidly across Africa in recent years, but it seems to have yet matched the graphic achievements of amazing cartograph.

Special thanks, as always, to Björn Larsson of Timetable Images for his efforts and permissions to repost.

Air France: The African Routes, 1977.

In the wake of Air Afrique Week, it might be most fitting to spend the latter half of the month examining a bit more of those carriers who served West Africa during Air Afrique's existence and in the aftermath of its sad demise.

The first such example is one of the newest additions to the Timetablist collection, an Air France route map from 1977, when Air Afrique was in its prime, and Air France was just beginning to adopt its modern color scheme. Surprisingly, Air France completely defers to the West African carrier in the Gulf of Guinea region, only touching Dakar on the route to Rio de Janeiro. While the former dominions of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia in North Africa are thoroughly serviced, France's colonial heartland is left untouched.

The service table at the bottom details Air France's weekly frequencies to North and East Africa and the Indian Ocean islands, and helpfully charts the use of particular aircraft, even if its not entirely clear which Paris airport hosts which flight. The footnotes confirm that Air France relies on Air Afrique, Cameroon Airlines, and UTA for services from Paris to West and Central Africa, and that these airlines, along with Air Djibouti, Air Comores, and Air Madagascar operate intra-African and domestic networks.

The next post details the Eastern portion of the map.

Iberia: Eastern Hemisphere, February 2006

Iberia's eastward system looks slimmer than its 1988 operations, but still connects to Dakar, Lagos, Malabo and Johannesburg in sub-Saharan Africa. Aside from the dense array of Moroccan cities, including the Western Saharan capital of El Aaiun, Iberia is otherwise surprisingly spare on North African destinations: no Algerian or Tunisian cities, for instance.