Norwegian Air Shuttle: The Long-Haul Destinations, November 2016

The recent route map of Norwegian Long Haul, the dreamliner-fleet division of Norwegian Air Shuttle, rapidly covering the globe.

The emphasis on dominating the low-fare brackets of the trans-Atlantic trade are clear, with eight American cities served, only three of which are predominantly leisure destinations: Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, and Orlando. Although utilizing some secondary airports like Oakland and BWI, Norwegian has not shied away from primary gateways such as LAX and JFK and other major airports like Newark. As mentioned in the first post this month about Norwegian, Barcelona will soon be added, giving several of these U.S. cities flights from six European airports on Norwegian B787s.

Four Caribbean destinations are also reached, these, interestingly served from these same North American cities: Boston—Guadeloupe and Boston—Martinique began in February 2016 before any flights to Logan from Copenhagen, Oslo, or London Gatwick. The French West Indies are served from New York and Baltimore as well. San Juan and St. Croix are only served from Europe.

The network is far less developed in the easterly direction. Reminiscent of the posts from earlier this month, but one Asian destination is served: Bangkok.

Norwegian Air Shuttle: New Route to Fort Lauderdale from Paris, August 2016

Yesterday's post discussed the acceleration of Newark Airport into an intercontinental gateway beginning around 1990, and the role of a Scandinavian airline in that growth. Here we have a similar circumstance, as the compact Ft. Lauderdale International Airport has grown from a discount, secondary airport into a major intercontinental gateway to balance Miami International in handling trans-ocean traffic into South Florida. 

Ft. Lauderdale's profile was elevated with the appearance of Caribbean and Latin American feeder flights and Canadian snow-bird services. Today, flag carriers now reach Ft. Lauderdale from as far as Colombia, Ecuador, and, since 2014, Brazil. Most recently—and most astonishingly—there is now nonstop service to Dubai, with Emirates commencing non-stop B777 flights this week. Announced barely two months ago, UAE megacarrier chose FLL over Miami as its 11th U.S. gateway due to its inline partnership with Jetblue.

But as impressive as the 14+ flight distances are, a recent development that has greatly raised Ft. Lauderdale as a gateway to Europe has been the arrival of Norwegian Air Shuttle's dreamliners from its Long Haul division. Paris-CDG is the fifth European city that Norwegian is connecting to Broward County, beginning flights this past August. Norwegian will add Barcelona as its sixth non-stop next year. Also announced back in October: British Airways will also start flying from London-Gatwick in 2017, and Condor made the airport part of its nationwide entry into the U.S. market from Frankfurt. 

SAS: Oslo-Newark Launch, March 2011

Continuing to look at SAS, this magazine page advert announced daily service from Oslo to Newark commencing on 28 March 2011, with an A330. The Scandinavian air confederation has a unique history with the New Jersey airport, having moved all its New York-area operations there in 1989-1990 as part of its partnership with—and ownership stake in— Continental Airlines, one of the early precursors to today's global alliance format, although it seems that in those days the transatlantic flights were only to Copenhagen and Stockholm. Those cities are listed here, along with Bergen, Stavanger, and Helsinki, somewhat curiously, in that Finland is not a member of the SAS system.

Long-Haul Destinations from Berlin, Summer 2015

Like many a good German airport company, the management of Berlin Tegel issues a printed timetable for traveler's reference. As we conclude the present series of posts on operations at Tegel in the Summer of 2015, this map offers an appropriate conclusion. 

There are two many cities here to feature in one or even two posts, and it is not particularly noteworthy that the German capital is connected to some three dozen other cities across Europe. This week we have, however, discussed a bit about the somewhat peculiar circumstances of Berlin's commercial air transportation, still divided between multiple airports, awaiting the long-delayed opening of its 21st century hub.

In the meantime, tiny Tegel, something of the LaGuardia of central Europe, squeezes in only a handful of long-hual flights, in part due to the city's dispersion of air traffic and in part due to the 

centralization of airline operations around Lufthansa's Frankfurt megahub and Munich base. 

Hometown carrier Air Berlin does the city some good turns, particularly the high-prestige widebody services to New York JFK and Chicago O'Hare. United offers the only US Flag appearance, with its 767 flights to Newark (although these are sometimes ignominiously downgraded to narrow body 757s in the winter). Delta Air Lines just announced this month that it will soon return to Tegel, which is symbolically important as Tegel was such an important base for Pan-Am's intra-Europe operations that Delta inherited. Air Berlin also flies to Reykjavík-Keflavík and a number of warm-weather leisure destinations. 

Perhaps more interesting are the handful of airlines connecting eastward to Asia. Azerbaijan Airlines was just recently featured here, and Qatar Airways scored a coup when it beat out Emirates for service to the Gulf—although Etihad snuck in through its ownership stake in Air Berlin, which flies non-stop to Abu Dhabi. Iraqi Airways makes for more fun planespotting, flying to both Erbil and Baghdad. This post is the first time we've featured the Iraqi flag carrier. 

Hainan Airlines added Berlin to its European system in 2012 along with Brussels and Budapest, and connects to Beijing with a A330-200 (rather than one of its Dreamliners). But what is surely the most unusual airline landing in Reinickendorf is MIAT Mongolian Airlines, which has actually long-served Berlin, landing its A310s at Schönefeld since at least the late 1990s. The Mongolian flag carrier currently operates one its gorgeously painted B767-300s via Moscow Sheremetyevo airport, and this post marks its premier on the Timetablist.  Although the airline also flies twice-weekly non-stop to Frankfurt, and once served Prague, Berlin is one its only European gateways. 

America West Airlines: Schedule from Honolulu, December 1991

A page from America West's late 1991 timetable, detailing the connections out of Honolulu, the available non-stops being via B747 to either Nagoya or Phoenix. It seems that the other mainland connection, to Las Vegas, would be discontinued in early 1992. Connections to West Coast destinations such as Oakland and Portland, as well as far distant New York (both JFK and Newark) as well as several Midwestern cities are shown also, with Moline, Illinois being farther away from Hawaii than Japan.

Air India: International Routes, c. 2012

Air India's global reach appears more comprehensive at first than it really is given this map's format. Once it is understood that the red lines indicate other air carriers, Air India's operations are in proper perspective: most of the cities on the map are unnecessary, including those such as Chicago which Air India served for years but flies to no more. In fact, the state carrier of one of the world's largest countries incredibly serves fewer than 25 international cities. Note the non-stop from Frankfurt to Amritsar, and another from Bangalore to Singapore, and that Kolkata has no international services. The world of Air India is rather diminutive.

The following post will detail the inset of the Middle Eastern routes.

Malaysia Airlines: Cape Town-Buenos Aires, 2010-2011

Of all the routes that Malaysia Airlines has pulled down, such as its Newark-Dubai-Kuala Lumpur and later Newark-Stockholm-Kuala Lumpur B777 service-- and all the cities it has withdrawn from--its list of terminated destinations is long-- none is quite so unusual, and so unfortunate, as the recent end of its Kuala Lumpur-Cape Town-Buenos Aires service. Just a year ago, the airline was offering special fares, priced in rand, for the transatlantic leg of the journey. Now, the airline has completely withdrawn from the South American continent, and without any African destinations outside of Cairo.

Cape Town itself is now without a nonstop connection to South America, although southeast Asia can still be reached with Singapore Airlines's nonstop to Singapore (the inevitable competition of this service may have been a primary factor in Malaysia's withdrawal). Buenos Aires passengers must head eastward to Johannesburg and connect to South African Airways, which also serves Sao Paulo from OR Tambo. Alternatively, Cape Town travelers can reach Brazil via Luanda on TAAG Angolan Airlines, which bridges to both Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Allegheny Airlines: Systemwide Network, 1963

Allegheny Airlines, the pride of the Northeast, had a taught span across the spine of Appalachia. Mainline schedules between a northern terminus at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and a southernmost end at Washington, cross-hatched with activity out of its strong bases at Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Wilkes-Barre, Providence and Baltimore.

Many municipal airfields which have no commercial service today, including those at Wheeling, New London, Bridgeport, Reading, were linked to regional capitals in Allegheny's cats-cradle.

The most distant routes reached the Great Lakes, splitting from Jamestown on the shores of Lake Chautauqua, continuing northward to reach Buffalo and westward to Erie, where it split again to either of those great mid-American metropoli, Cleveland and Detroit. A southwestern spur from Pittsburgh plunged down the Ohio River Valley, touching Wheeling, Marietta, and terminating at Huntington-Ashland.

Allegheny would, fifteen years after the publication of this map, and in the frenzied era of deregulation, form the basis for USAir, which would in turn lead Pittsburgh and Baltimore through massive airport expansions as major mid-continent and mid-Atlantic hubs. Today, only USAirway's presence at Philadelphia and its general prominence in the metro Washington and New York markets lend any veneration to its Alleghenian origins.

LOT Polish Airlines: US Routes, 2007-2010

LOT Polish Airlines had quite a few more flights to the United States, from quite a few more Polish cities, just a few years ago. This included non-stop service from Kraków to Chicago and non-stop wide body flights from Rzeszów to both New York-JFK and Newark which began in June 2007, but have since been discontinued. The airline still flies to all three American airports, but only from Warsaw's Chopin International.

Jet Airways: 3 Direct Daily Flights from Brussels to India, January 2012

Jet Airways, India's premier international carrier, operates a so-called "scissors hub" out of Brussels National Airport, connecting its North American destinations (New York-JFK, Newark, and Toronto) and its subcontinental bases (Mumbai, Chennai, and Delhi), so that eat many times there may be multiple Jet Airways wide bodies parked at the terminals at Zavantem. The above advertisement is from a backlit billboard above the departures hall at BRU.

Brussels Airport Arrival Channel, January 2012: Screen # 2

The second screen flashing on the arrivals channel at the Brussels Airport Sheraton also features an overnight Brussels Airlines flight from equatorial Africa, this one the Kinshasa-Yaoundé SN354, but is otherwise a bit more diversified: shown here is Ethiopian Airlines own service into Brussels from Addis Ababa, via Milan Malpensa, and at the close of the hour the two blades of Jet Airways's scissor hub begin to close in on Zavantem, as nonstops from Toronto, Newark, New York-JFK, and Delhi arrive within a span of five minutes. In between, a handful of classic flag-carrier short-hauls from nearby EU hubs touchdown: KLM from Amsterdam and Lufthansa from Frankfurt.

United/Continental's Nonstop B757 Transatlantic Routes Are Stopping, 2012

A map which accompanied a recent Washington Post article on the increasingly-frequent use of narrowbody B757s on increasingly long routes to Europe from the East Coast, which inevitably end up as less than nonstop when facing winter jet streams. The article singles out United/Continental for this colorful graphic, but the text also mentions USAirways routes out of Philadelphia and American Airlines's rampant employment of the 757. The article also lists several unusual airports receiving unscheduled intercontinental flights, such as Bangor, Maine, Albany, and Stewart Airport in Newburgh, New York.

USAirways: Ft. Lauderdale Hub, 2004

USAirways established a Caribbean basin hub in the middle of the last decade, but apparently it didn't last. Sort of a shame, and a bit unexpected in that USAirways, like other legacy carriers, has been looking to international traffic for revenue growth recently, evident in USAirway's services from Belize to Rio from its Charlotte hub, which much offer more traffic and profits.

Aer Lingus Worldwide 1999

Two route maps from the Spring and Autumn 1999 timetable of Aer Lingus, when it was fresh with new Airbuses and a new paint scheme, part of a new alliance, and building on its existing routes to serve a New Economy Celtic Tiger. The only major development in 1999 was the addition of Los Angeles, but this pair is included here for its interesting cartographics, with the subway-like route lines, color coded by Irish city.
Since then, Aer Lingus has been so crippled by low-cost competition that it has become the first flag carrier to adopt the full LCC model itself, leading to its exit from One World, and eventual part-ownership by it s rival, Rynaair. Aer Lingus has also retreated from Los Angeles, Newark, London City and Stansted and Ireland is mired in a painful recession.

American Airlines Hub Maps, 2002: London

London has been American's pride of network since before it purchased TWA's Heathrow rights a decade before. This map is a bit deceptive, in that it shows a completely random spread of cities beyond Britain which have never been served by American, but seem to be OneWorld connections with British Airways or Gulf Air, from Teeside to Doha, Leeds to Muscat.

At the right are the US cities graced with a flagship nonstop, all of which enjoy the same privilege today, including Raleigh-Durham and the other complex hubs previously discussed. However, what is also deceiving about this graphic is that it does not specify which cities were crowned with Heathrow rights under Bermuda II rules and which had to shuffle into lowly Gatwick.

American Airlines Hub Maps, 2002: LAX

Los Angeles has never been a dedicated first-tier hub for American, but the airline continues to profit from wealthy origin-and-destination traffic to far corners of its network. Shown here is a short-lived LAX-Seoul service, the only Eagle-emblazoned trans-Pacific flight; other Asian cities are linked by other carriers, as are codeshare offerings to the South Pacific with Qantas. Silver jets spread their wings  on two direct flights to the Hawaiian Islands. A measure of Meso-american non-stops links Mexican leisure destinations and capital cities. The long-range flagship services link L.A. to London and Paris.