ASKY Route Network, June 2016

As mentioned in the previous post, the Accra-Monrovia sector was once the third-busiest route pair in West and Central Africa. Lomé-based ASKY Airlines for a time plied the corridor, for a time even acting as the sole carrier to Monrovia's secondary, inner-city airfield, Spriggs-Payne, but has since completely withdrawn from serving Liberia. 

The above route map, from mid-2016, shows Liberia and Sierra Leone as a gap in the carrier's extensive West African coverage, spinning out from Togo with a number of secondary links between regional capitals such as Niamey, Abuja, Libreville and Conakry in particular but also reaching under-served cities like Bangui and Bissau. 

Overlaid with ASKY's web are the bright green long-haul connections of parent company Ethiopian Airlines: to Addis Ababa, New York, and São Paulo. The Brazilian route, unfortunately, did not last (the airline switched the GRU non-stop to its Addis Ababa hub this year), but Ethiopian continues to invest in the ASKY project—and the Togolese government has responded with the opening of an enormous new terminal at Tokion in April of 2016. Since this time, Ethiopian has been able to sustain the transatlantic service to Newark, making tiny Lomé one of the just four West African airports with non-stop service to the United States. 

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. 

Air Côte d'Ivoire: The Regional Network, March 2017

The other intersection of Air Afrique's complex politico-economic network was its base at Abidjan. After the demise of the pan-regional carrier in 2002, Côte d'Ivoire launched a succession of national carriers, first Air Ivoire and today Air Côte d'Ivoire.

Today—particularly with the sad degradation of Arik Air and other Nigerian attempts at a regional, trans-national carrier—this airline is perhaps the most important airline network in the region, stretching not only from Dakar to Douala, but also offering the rare handful of inter-languaphone connections across the English- and French-speaking postcolonial checkerboard of West Africa, with nonstops from Abidjan to Freetown, Monrovia, Accra, Lagos and even Abuja.

Like Air Afrique before it, and in a similar fashion to its only rival to regional dominance, the Ethiopian Airline's backed venture Asky, the Ivorian airline extends well into central Africa, with service to French-speaking Libreville and Brazzaville as well as its coastal oil city, Pointe-Noire, and even as far south as Kinshasa.

However, unlike Air Afrique and its immediate predecessor, Air Ivoire, Air Côte d'Ivoire has yet to launch any service outside of Africa, such as flights to Europe. Despite the volume of traffic between Abidjan and France, it is all taken up by Air France and other metropole companies. Air France/KLM Group's 20% stake in Air CIV likely explains the lack of intercontinental operations. 

Air Afrique Route Network, 1987 (2 of 2)

Following on from the previous post, this large-format map allows for a close examination of the regional network of Air Afrique. This network was both extensive and limited, paradoxically, in that it connected the capital cities of the ten member states with an impressive array of links, and yet at the same time served very few other cities in the region and no secondary cities within any country at all, except for the single example that proves the rule: Pointe-Noire, the seaside petrol port in the Congo Republic. But no Nouadhibou, for instance.

Outside of the major cities of its member-states, only Conakry and Lagos are served in Western Africa. Monrovia, Freetown, and Accra are bypassed. In Central Africa, the former member states of Cameroon and Gabon, which both subsequently set up their own national carriers, are still part of the system. Douala is connected to Bangui, Brazzaville, Cotonou, and Lagos—the latter a singular example of a non-member city connected with a non-member city. Even at this scale, it is unclear if the Douala—Cotonou route actually stopped in Malabo or this is just the confusion of the cartography. Likewise, Libreville is linked to Brazzaville, Lomé, and Lagos. No Yaoundé, however. 

A small detail that is easy to miss given the contours of the continental shelf is the Dakar—Las Palmas route. 

Air Afrique: The Four Continent Route Map, 1987.

Fitting to end this year's Air Afrique Week with one of the most magnificent items of the airline's heritage that this blog has been able to feature: a 1987 route map, found recently on the wall of a travel agency in Dakar, Senegal. 

The Map is based on a popular wall map that was widely distributed in the 1980s, and although strikingly colorful it is not particularly faithful to terrain or topography. It is generally a poor decision to begin a route map from a conventional map, as generally the original cartographer has already displayed a surfeit of information which is extraneous to displaying the airline's route system. 

While that is especially true in this case, as a Mercator Projection version of this map is thoroughly critiqued on this cartography blog, in this case the trouble is greatly mitigated by the use of white route lines against the dark, natural palette of the oceans and continents. 

Being itself a wall-sized poster, this map is also large enough to visually convey the complex network of Air Afrique to the observer by its scale. Beyond the dense interlacing of its regional network (which will be more thoroughly examined in a separate, subsequent post) what is immediately evident are the long haul connections to other continents.

Chief among these are the many Trans-Saharan routes to France, especially the fountain shower emanating out of Paris: Bordeaux, Abidjan, Lome, Ouagadougou, Marseille, Lyon, Ouagadougou, Rome, N'Djamena, and Bangui. 

The interior connections to southernly French cities was surely a stop-over operation: Bamako is connected only to Lyon and Marseille, for instance. Likewise, follow the many lines to see how Niamey, was linked to all three secondary French cities, including, apparently, via Agadez (gateway to vast Areva uranium mine that fuels most of France's public power utility) but not directly to Paris non-stop. Interestingly, one of the other cities not directly connected to Paris is one of the airline's main hubs: Dakar, which seems to be linked only via Nouakchott. or one of several other European cities. 

These latter elements—Dakar to Bordeaux, Geneva, Rome, and Marseille— are separated out from the crowd by swinging in a dramatic, centripetal fashion westward, well over the North Atlantic. The only route to the west of this is reverse-S curve Dakar—New York service. As has been stated many times before during our Air Afrique weeks, as much prestige as the multiple routes to the metropole afforded, it was this lone transatlantic operation that was the flagship pride of the consortium. 

It is easy in this rendering to overlook the other bell of Air Afrique's dual-hub network: Abidjan, whose ribboning loops link it across the region and again to Lyon, Marseille, Geneva, Bordeaux and again to Paris itself. The last intercontinental element is eastward endeavor from Chad to Jeddah, a nod to the pilgrimage traffic of so many Sahelians. 

The following post will focus on the regional route network. 

Air Afrique, Boarding Pass from the Congo, 1961

Here is an artifact from early in the life of Air Afrique: an old-fashioned ticket and boarding pass from 1961. While the details of the flight are not shown, the departure tax stub <<redevance>> was issued by the A.S.E.C.N.A. ground agents in the Republic of the Congo, the southernmost member of the Air Afrique coalition—indicating that this was likely departing from either Brazzaville or Pointe-Noire. In those days, destinations were many, mostly neighboring Libreville, Douala, or perhaps N'Djamena or Bangui. The ticket jacket provides the address of the airline's headquarters in Abidjan—perhaps that was the ultimate destination of this itinerary. 

ASKY Airlines Network: March/April 2014 (Eastern portion)

A double-page spread at the back of ASKY Airlines' in-flight magazine from earlier this year: while the airline's primary hub is in Lomé and its strongest presence is across the west coast, the carrier is firmly established into the Congo basin, stretching as far south as Brazzaville, Pointe-Noire and Kinshasa. There is actually quite an operation out of Libreville, it seems, with links to Lagos and what is apparently the only connection to Yaoundé (in a now-typical network model; few ASKY destinations are linked to only one other city). 

The sole connection to Bangui appears to be Douala, which is partially plunged into the spine of the magazine, as is Abuja, which seems to connect up to N'Djamena, the airline's northeasternmost city, aside from the shamrock-green codeshare flight to the superhub of its parent company, Ethiopian: Addis Ababa appears on the map at upper right, somewhere in distant Chad, if the map were to scale. 

The next post features the western portion of the map. 

Toumaï Air Tchad: Weekly Schedule, March 2005

The weekly schedule of little Toumaï Air Tchad, the de-facto state carrier of the Republic of Chad, in early 2005. What might not be immediately evident, but is nonetheless a curious feature of this schedule, is that it does not actually mention N'Djamena, the country's capital, only significant city, and base of operations for the airline, by name. It is just presumed that each flight originates and returns to the international airport, the "NDJ" in the upper cell, near the vol, is the only written indication.

The only domestic destination, served twice-weekly, is the ancient imperial city of Abéché, now Chad's fourth-largest city, located in the eastern-central region of this enormous country. Tuesday-Sunday is dedicated to a Cotonou-Douala-Bangui operation, while Thursdays and Saturdays the airline reaches Brazzaville, via Douala or Bangui.  There are no flights on Wednesdays, and Friday has an additional operation to Niamey. There is no service to neighboring Sudan, Libya, or Nigeria.

The airline has had a troubled history, having been banned not only by the European Union but its own National regulators after a damning IATA safety report, and it is largely inactive at present. That hasn't prevented some from being enthusiastic and optimistic about the carrier.

Cameroon Airlines network, May 1975

Yet another gem from Timetable Images, this vintage artifact shows the extent of Cameroon Airline's operations from May 1975, at the height of the era when the airline adopted its psychedelically sweeping script. The cartography here is roughly accurate, the continental forms more sketch than measure, and the bright pink outline of the Republic is hugely oversized to its actual proportion, taking up much of what would actually be Nigeria, its crown-craned head stretching well into the central African territory that is actually occupied by Chad.

Unlike yesterday's post, showing the domestic network, here Douala takes center stage, with three intercontinental offerings: direct to Paris, direct to Marseille then Paris, and Rome-Paris and Nice-Paris. Curiously, the cover above differs from the inside Timetable, showing Geneva, and not Nice.

To the west, a classic West African coastal route hops twice-weekly to Lagos, Cotonou and Abidjan before leaping to end at Dakar; there's also a tiny jump to nearby Malabo (also absent from the index inside). A short southernly operation links Libreville and Brazzaville. The only international service from Yaoundé appears to be to Bangui. Lastly, and interestingly, the well-emphasized pan-Cameroonian interieur operation up the spine of the crown-craned country, Ngaoundéré-Garoua-Maroua, terminating at N'Djamena.

Special thanks to the incredible Timetable Image blog run by Björn Larsson, where credit is due for this item. 

Regular Domestic Flights of Cameroon Airlines, c.1977

The domestic operations of Cameroon Airlines, as published in the "Transport" chapter of an old promotional hardback profile of the central African nation, c.1977. The nation looks dashingly dinosaurish as always, the rounded edges of its peculiar profile squared off in an early computer graphic program.

Interestingly, it is Yaoundé which appears to be the major hub; bigger, more commercial Douala is an after-thought in the lower-left corner of the country, looking no more important than tiny Tiko.  However, through some oversight, the capital city is not shown as featuring an international airport. Douala does not participate in the Garoua central air artery, which links Maroua and Yagoua and terminates at the Chadian capital, N'Djamena, the only non-domestic city shown on the map.

The information is quite similar to the airline's own literature from the same period (published here in 2011), with slight changes in domestic webbing.

Afriqiyah Airways Network, 2011

A destination map of sorts, printed on the window shade of the Afriqiyah Airways ticket office, which now sits fading in the West African sun as the airline vacated in the office some time in 2011 due to its global grounding as a result of the Libyan revolution.

Previous to its sudden suspension, Afriqiyah was a surging force in trans-African transportation, connecting via its main hub at Tripoli to 14 West and Central African destinations as well as Johannesburg, transferring these intercontinental services to an array of European cities, from Düsseldorf to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Rome, as shown here, although the labels for each red dot are scattered, with Jeddah off the coast of Australia, Bangui near Antarctica, Ouagadougou and N'Djamena in the Indian Ocean, Khartoum at the Maldives, Abidjan near the Falklands, Kinshasa near Cape Town, Niamey near the Cape Verde Islands, Rome near Arkhangelsk, London north of Greenland.

Farther afield, Afriqiyah flew to a handful of Asian destinations: Jeddah and Dubai, predictably, somewhat randomly to Dhaka, Bangladesh, and distant Beijing.

Since the partial cessation of hostilities in still-volatile post-Qaddafi Libya, Afriqiyah has operated a diminished network, with services to Jeddah, Düsseldorf, London but not a single sub-Saharan city.

Air Afrique: The Schedules from Paris and Pointe-Noire, 1990

Continuing from the previous post, the schedule from Air Afrique to and from Paris CDG rounds out, followed by the schedule from Pointe-Noire, the Republic of Congo's coastal petrol capital.

Non-stop fights from Charles de Gaulle reach N'Djamena, Nouakchott, Niamey and Ouagadougou, as well as Rome, interestingly, an intermediate stop of RK011 to Dakar, shown in the previous post. Domestic connections to Nouadhibou on Air Mauritanie and to Yamoussoukro on Air Ivoire are shown.

Flights from Brazzaville and Lomé link to Pointe-Noire, one of Air Afrique's southernmost destinations. The schedule helpfully provides links to European destinations such as Nice, Geneva, Marseille, London, Cologne, Frankfurt, Brussels and Bordeaux; three of the connections from Brazzaville’s Maya Maya International Airport are listed on the DeHavilland DHC-6, or the Fokker F-28 and F-27 metal of Lina Congo, the obscure domestic airline of the Republic of the Congo. All three national airlines mentioned here (along with Air Afrique itself, of course) are now defunct.

Special thanks to the wonderful website Airline Memorabilia for the original posting. 

Air Afrique: Schedule from Abidjan, 1990

The remainder of this Air Afrique Week will be devoted to reposting pages from the airline's timetable from mid-1990, which was originally posted by our friends at the Spanish-language Airline Memorabilia site.

Here is a page of the superhub schedule: flights out of Abidjan's Port Bouet Airport, the airline's busiest operating base. Non-stop flights within the consortium's network include a litany of A-300 flights to nearby Lomé and Niamey and two-stop service to Douala and Libreville, while other flights in West Africa include a single non-stop DC-10 flight to Lagos and Monrovia, once per week, which, although just next door, are as frequent as the DC-10 services to Geneva, Lyon and Marseille. The pride-of-network, twice weekly trans-Atlantic flights to New York-JFK are at right. Milan, Munich, Manchester, Moscow, London and Montreal are also shown, along with other connecting services to as nearby as N'Djamena and as distant as Los Angeles.

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.

ASKY Airlines Schedule, April 2013

The complete network schedule for ASKY Airlines from this spring, helpfully published in their in-flight magazine, detailing their weekly timetable for flights between twenty cities in West and Central Africa, from Banjul to Bamako to Brazzaville.

Ethiopian Airlines: The West African destinations, Spring 2013

Nearly twenty Ethiopian flights stretch across the African continent to points in Western and Southern Africa.

Air Zaïre Network, 1981

Given this week's sleek but slender offerings from newly-minted Korongo, its incredible to look back a time when Congolese carriers had a much wider reach: the above poster shows the spread of Air Zaïre at its zenith, when it was "also celebrating 20 years" since its founding in 1961 as Air Congo.

The national carrier had an astonishing array of services, which are here represented by a powerful kinetic gesture reminiscent of an African antelope artwork. The European cities are connected by the arc of the animal's horn: Athens, Rome, Geneva, Frankfurt, Madrid, Amsterdam, London, Paris, and of course Brussels. 

The second horn aligns with the West African route, linking Kinshasa with Lagos, Libreville, Douala, Lomé, Abidjan, and Dakar. Lubumbashi is the only domestic destination included here but was hardly the only internal operation. 

East Africa on the animal's underside show Lusaka, its southernmost city (South Africa was shunned) but also Kigali, Bujumbura, Nairobi, Entebbe and Dar Es Salaam.

This calligraphic creature was used for a number of years, appearing on timetables and other advertisements. Air Zaïre's fortunes would sink with the rest of the continent's aviation companies, and indeed with country itself, which continues to be mired in conditions far less promising than a quarter century ago. 

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.

Camair Co: Systemwide Timetable, Fall 2011

The three pages of the ephebic Cameroon Airlines Corporation, the 10-month old national airline of Cameroon, from the previous fall. Camair has already managed to cover a wide swath of Central Africa, from Dakar to inland N'djamena and Bangui. Lagos is virtually the only Anglophone city served. Nearby Libreville and Malabo are also linked to Yaounde and Douala; a multi-day shuttle service runs between these two principal cities. There are also a handful of domestic routes. A wide body service to Paris-CDG has also commenced (the airline has a pair of B767 widebodies).

ASKY Airlines network, December 2011

A different ASKY than from a year previous: service to Banjul, Dakar and Pointe-Noire are gone, as is the underlying geography of the Gulf of Guinea. Abuja and Yaounde have been added, with Libreville beginning to seem like a focus city.

Lome-based ASKY seems to have failed at bridging the chessboard of Anglo- and Francophone capitals of West Africa, as one of the only English-speaking link is the familiar Accra-Monrovia-Freetown run, which no longer reaches up the coast to Cap Vert. A weekly flight from Monrovia to Bamako is also now absent.