Aeromexico: The North American Routes, December 2015

 Continuing from the previous post, a second map from Aeromexico's in-flight magazine at the end of 2015, showing the airline's array of flights from seven cities to its NAFTA partners. 

Although Aeromexico serves 18 cities in los Estados Unidos, this is perhaps fewer than might be guessed; it is fewer U.S. airports than British Airways to London, for instance. Most flights originate in Mexico City, with a handful fanning out from the northern economic powerhouse of Monterrey—which will be the subject of the subsequent post. There are a few flights out of the country's second largest city: Guadalajara, but surprising only one flight from Cancún, Mexico's second busiest airport, to New York; today the route is flown only by Delta and American Airlines. While Avianca and COPA fly to several Florida cities such as Ft. Lauderdale and Tampa, Aeromexico only served Orlando and Miami, and the Merida flight has been discontinued. The flight to Denver is now year-round. The flight from Morelia, in Michoacán, to Chicago-O'Hare is still flying seasonally. The Boston flight, which commenced in June of that year, has sadly since been discontinued.

There is a more significant cluster of flights up to (Alto) California, including to less commonly-served airports such as Sacramento, Ontario, and Fresno—which are all premiering on The Timetablist with this post. The Guadalajara—Fresno link is especially notable as the San Joaquin Valley metro has no direct flights to domestic cities such as New York, Washington, or Houston.  Los Angeles has links to four cities. 

The three largest airports of Canada are connected to Benito Juarez; the flight to Vancouver has been an apparent success. 

Emirates: Dubai to (the wrong) Panama City, August 2015

Back when Emirates first announced the world's newest-longest flight, non-stop between Dubai and Panama, in August 2015, it was major news, both due to the length of the flight plan itself and the slightly unusual destination. Although Panama is the hub for COPA airlines and therefore a significant aviation crossroads for Latin America, Emirates has no formal feeder arrangement in place with the Panamanian airline previously, and also bypassed larger cities and airports, most notably Mexico City. 

The news made Bloomberg, although a sub-sub at the graphics department missed the memo about which Panama City was being connected; here clearly showing the Spring Break version, in the panhandle of Florida, lit in yellow. Oops. 

An additional oops has been the heavily-delayed roll-out of the flight, first set for early 2016, it is now expected sometime in the first half of 2017, but has yet to declare a specific date for the inaugural flight. In the meantime, the airline has boldly expanded in Florida, adding Orlando in late 2015 and most recently Fort Lauderdale, but not, however, Panama City. But, you ever know with Emirates.  

Emirates Route Map, August 2016: The American Routes

Yesterday's post introduced the latest Emirates route map, with its gorgeously-tessalated, neo-Fullerian projection. Left off that first post was this second page, showing the Americas exclusively (and a large swath of the southeast Pacific, interestingly). 

Emirates increasing number of routes to North America are some of the longest commercial flights in the world, especially the ultra-long haul Dubai—San Francisco and Dubai—Los Angeles runs, whose twice daily A380 services are scheduled in at a staggering 16 hours 15 minutes, currently the world's sixth longest non-stop flight, followed by Dubai—Houston, which is ninth. Dubai—Dallas is 17th, and Dubai—Fort Lauderdale is 24th, and Dubai—Orlando is 28th. 

Even though it doesn't rank as highly, the Sao Paulo non-stops generally top 15 hours, the Buenos Aires link an even longer haul. Indeed, the shortest route on this map is the controversial fifth-freedom Milan—New York JFK service. 

While Emirates continues to add U.S. gateways (as was discussed in posts earlier this month), it is interesting to note that several large cities have yet to be reached, particularly Mexico City but also Vancouver and Montreal (which is served by Qatar and Turkish Airlines). Miami was recently bypassed for Ft. Lauderdale, a curious development in American intercontinental aviation which has been covered extensively earlier this month.

The map does include the Dubai—Panama route, which at 17.5 hours would soar in the rankings of ultra-long haul services. However, this launch has been delayed for almost a year and the exact start date has not been set, it is both drawn on the system and featured in the box at lower right, which also announces the start of flights to Bologna and Bamako—the table itself an index of the extraordinary breadth and growth of this behemoth airline. 

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.

Emirates: Daily flights to/from Ft. Lauderdale, 15 December 2016

As mentioned in the last post, today marks the launch of Emirates Airline's daily non-stop service from Dubai to Ft. Lauderdale, the Gulf mega-carrier's 11th U.S. gateway and the second in Florida—the 10th American city was Orlando, launched in September 2015. The B777-300 service is by far the longest non-stop from Ft. Lauderdale.

The marketing of the flight by Emirates has been somewhat interesting, as the adverts emphasize "South Florida" with pictures of the art deco streets of Miami Beach.

Along Sheikh Zayed Road, in Dubai itself, where the airline takes up the side of a massive Novotel in Dubai Internet City to advertise its constant new services, the tarps are emblazoned with "Miami" over Ft. Lauderdale, as seen here as workers paste over the "Hello Hanoi" advertisements from the beginning of 2016.

 

TACA Airlines Network, 2011

Fast-forward from the previous post, and tiny El Salvador has, through merger and might, grown to one of the largest inter-American airlines and virtually the only international airline between Mexico and Panama, with focus cities in San Jose, Costa Rica and Guatemala City. The Spanish fine print at the bottom of the map mentions the original state carriers, such as LASCA, NICA, Aviateca, and newly-formed national divisions such as TACA Perú, that form the modern airline. The latter is based from a sizable hub at Lima, detailed in the next post.

In North America, the airline runs as far northwest as San Francisco and as far northeast as Toronto, although an earlier route to Boston failed. New Orleans is gone, but Orlando and Dallas have been added, along with highly-prestigious and lucrative routes to Washington and New York. The next few posts looks at the growing airline in detail.

Saudia: Seasonal Service to Orlando, 1994

Reprint of: "Saudi Airline Plans Seasonal Flights To Orlando International"
published on June 21, 1994, written by Jerry Jackson for the Orlando Sentinel:


Saudia Airlines, the flagship airline of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, will begin flying into Orlando via New York on July 4, Orlando International Airport officials said Monday.

Flights using Boeing 747-300 aircraft will operate twice a week from Jeddah and Riyadh, to Orlando International Airport with a brief stop at New York's Kennedy International Airport.

Saudia's flights initially are scheduled to operate through September, primarily for the summer tourism season in Florida. But airport officials said they hope the route will be successful and that service will be extended.

''Saudia is the flagship carrier for Saudia Arabia and the only airline offering nonstop service from the U.S. to the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia,'' said Keith Phildius, senior vice president for international development and marketing for Orlando International.

It is the second airline from the Mideast to announce seasonal service to Orlando in the past six months. In January, El Al Israel Airline launched twice weekly service to Orlando International through Feb. 20 and the end of the pilgrimage season to the Holy Land.

Also this year, Aeroflot Russian International Airlines began regularly scheduled service between Moscow and Orlando on a test basis.

''I think it says a lot that within a two or three-month period of time, two of the world's renowned airlines - Aeroflot and Saudia - are coming to Orlando. It's good news,'' Phildius said.

More than a dozen airlines provide regularly scheduled international service to 20 destinations from Orlando. Another 40 charter airlines fly frequently between scores of other foreign cities and Orlando.

Airport officials said the decision by Saudia Airlines to fly to Orlando, shuttling tourists and business travelers to Central Florida, helps Orlando stretch its vision as an international center.

''This goes beyond our traditional markets of Latin America and Europe,'' said Carolyn Fennell, a spokeswoman for the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority.

A representative of Saudia Airlines could not be reached Monday, and Orlando airport officials had no further details about the service.

National Airlines Network, c.1979

A great smile spreading from California to the Alps, National Airlines ran a boomerang-shaped network at the height of its operations. Multiple routes roped between regions like the strings of a guitar: A cluster of West Coast cities linked to the Deep South and Florida, where the network pivoted up the Eastern Seaboard to New York and Washington, or continued its arc across the Atlantic to five of Europe's largest gateways: London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Zürich.

The map is unique in that one dot represents multiple airports within one metropolitan region: Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Miami are together; Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota, and Fort Myers are one; Charleston/Savannah, New York/Newark, Mobile/Pensacola, and San Francisco/San Jose the same. Its difficult to discern the hubs of the network here, but it seems that Miami, New Orleans and Jacksonville were the keystones of this arch. For the latter two, this was truly a golden age, as neither has yet to regain non-stop transatlantic flights to multiple European cities.

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.

British Airways, the North American routes, Autumn 1999

The Trans-atlantic routes are the lifeblood of BA, but its interesting to note that a handful of these cities no longer see jets from London. These include Pittsburgh, which was once a major midwestern hub and is today eerily quiet, and Detroit, from which sadly BA recently withdrew as an unprofitable destination. More interesting are the sunbelt boomtowns, such as Charlotte, which is still connected to Europe by USAirways, as well as Phoenix and San Diego, which despite their growing size seem to lack the cosmopolitan need for a connection to Heathrow.

American Airlines Hub Maps, 2002: Boston Logan

Boston has never been a true hub for any airline, other than a feeder to a handful of European airlines or a catchment for high-value local passengers. American's array in 2002 included more code-shares than mainline services, mostly long-range transcontinental runs; connections to hubs; and its flagship transatlantic routes, often on glistening silver B777s. Links via other carriers to Canada, Down-east, the Islands are shown; all of this intersperses at right, with Bermuda, New York, Paris, London, Halifax and Burlington shown in counter-clockwise arrangement from 4 to 1 as being equidistant from Logan. Islip, Ottawa, Vancouver and Chicago are all arrayed from 11 to 8.

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.

KLM: Amsterdam-Orlando

KLM had served a variety of US cities over the years, especially in cooperation with Northwest Airlines (Memphis, Minneapolis). Despite the theatrics of Shamu and company, this 1988 launch to Disney World might have been short-lived, as KLM is no longer a scheduled arrival at Orlando. During this period, it was possible to fly off to Europe, Japan and Brazil on flag carriers, giving central Florida a cosmopolitan air. Currently, the Amsterdam-Orlando route is served by KLM's sister carrier, holiday-focused Martinair.

Icelandair System, 1999

Icelandair enjoyed a golden era as Iceland's economy boomed in the last ten years and Iceland became the hippest destination for European and American weekenders. This map shows the flag-carrier on the cusp of this period, which has since ended with the complete meltdown of the global finance, which hit Iceland as hard as any place.

Note the North American destinations: Minneapolis, Orlando, Baltimore, and Halifax-- Baltimore is sadly no longer a destination, and the other two are now seasonal. Icelandair is much more widespread in Europe, ten years on, making its own way to Helsinki, for instance. It also stretches to Seattle now, filling the gap which was created when SAS made the painful decision to withdraw its long-going Copenhagen service. Two Greenlandic cities are also marked in red, although these flights are often passed between Icelandair, Greenlandair, and Air Iceland.