Thai Airways Route Table, M-P, November 2016

Continuing on from the last post, tagging Thai Airways's route table from last month in the back of its in-flight magazine with the destinations M-P. 

Thai Airways: The eastward route network, 2013

The right-hand side of the route network of Thai Airways International, another page from a 2013 edition of the flag carrier's Sawasdee inflight magazine, continuing from the previous post. Most connections from Bangkok, are unsurprising, with a number of cross-connections at Hong Kong and Seoul, although perhaps more interesting are the routes to Kunming and Chengdu in interior China. The inset shows domestic routes and the now-scrapped service to Los Angeles.

EVA Air Network, c. 2010

Continuing to look at the airlines of Taiwan, here is straightforward route map of the Republic of China's secondary carrier, EVA Air, in its signature evergreen. From Taoyuan, long haul operations spread east and west, to Europe and North America; EVA was one of the earliest Asian carriers to land at Seattle and has long served Vancouver as well. (Houston has since been added). 

Amsterdam and Vienna are interesting European destinations, and are still served in an unusual routing via a minihub Bangkok—only Paris is served direct from the home airport. Other notable destinations include the sole antipodean city of Brisbane, and a number of secondary cities in Japan such as Fukuoka, as well as the Osaka—Los Angeles supplementing its direct service from Taipei.

Notably absent from the map is any Mainland China service; EVA Air now flies to 17 cities in the PRC.

China Airlines: Direct Flight Non-Stop from Rome to Taipei, November 2016

                                      

A back-lit billboard currently gracing the departures halls of Rome Fiumicino Airport, promoting China Airlines's hub at Taipei as a gateway to the "Extreme Orient" and Oceania. Although the dotted lines land on countries, not specific cities, there are a lot of options of the Italian traveler headed east, as CAL links to three cities in Australia, two in New Zealand, two in Malaysia, and a dozen in Japan. Indonesia and the Philippines are also served but are not shown on this advertisement's map. 

Finnair: The Shortcut to 11 Cities in Asia, 2012

As our first post of the month featured an unusual route between easternmost Europe and China, this item which has been in our filebox for a few years seems most relevant. Finnair has over the last decade remade itself as a premier airline between Europe and Asia, especially China, avoiding competing on the trans-Atlantic competition, where its northeasternmost position was a disadvantage, and playing up the strength of Helsinki's near-polar location the long-haul routes follow flow across the continent efficiently. 

Finnair has had a lot of success with this strategy, even profiting from some of the world's more random long-haul routings from what is essentially a very small airport at Vantaa to cities such as Nagoya and Chongqing, which was the newest destination on this map. Since this magazine advert, Finnair has expanded into China further, reintroducing Guangzhou and adding Xi'an, as well as serve to Ho Chi Minh City, although Hanoi was less successful. Much of this service is also apparently seasonal. 

This advert's smooth whites and greys almost feel polar, positioning the globe in such a way that the 11 trans-Asian routes flow over its curvature. Its unclear exactly what the European routes are, as they are not labeled, but the concept of Helsinki as a transit hub is made quite clear. A single line tucks behind the planet, indicate Finnair's few North American routes, which currently consist of New York and Miami and seasonal service to Chicago, but will soon include San Francisco. Boston, Ft. Lauderdale, Seattle, Toronto and Montreal are among those cities that didn't work out. 

Lufthansa: The Worldwide Network, mid-1973

 

A recent post referenced the famous Lufthansa Spinnernetz Streckenatlas, which brought to our editorial attention that we had overlooked posting one of the more legendary graphics of Timetable History. Here is the 1973 version, courtesy of the perennially superb collection of Flickr user Caribb. 

As its base, the map is a unique, polar-focused pseudo-Azimuthal projection, showing all continents but with the Pacific meridians hooking back away from the globe's infinite edge into the north pole. The network itself is given an even more liberal representation, made up of just ten enormous trunk routes, intersecting at the center of the map over Germany (but, interestingly, not specifically mentioning any Deutsche Stadt).

Foreign and overseas destinations are listed in neat columns as these thick ribbons pass near to them: Singapore and Jakarta are skirted, not passed over, on the way to Sydney (Lufthansa left Australia decades ago). A single line from Philadelphia to Quito hits Nassau, Kingston and Bogota, meeting up with some sort of Europe–Caracas route before reaching the Andean way stations. A small offshoot links to Mexican destinations, including Monterrey and Merida, which are also of course no longer served.  The transpolar route from Germany to Anchorage makes right angle with Germany—Bangkok; a semi-circle of Hong Kong—Osaka(Itami)—Tokyo(Haneda)—Anchorage makes the grapefruit quarter.

Other images from caribb's Flickr stream show a fleet of DC-8s and 707s in heavy rotation, assisted by the brand-new B747s in the fleet. The next post will detail the African and South American Cone destinations.

As it has so many times in the past, Timetablist would like to express its appreciation for Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal)'s incredible collection, and to say thanks  for allowing the reuse of these images under creative commons.

Singapore Airlines Network, 1976

This high disco-era Singapore Airlines route map boldly fits the styles of the times, laid out on a blinding dance floor of jolting ribbons, the jagged bands of red and blue interrupted by thunderbolts of strobe.

Aside from this eye-watering background, the route map cartography itself is rather bland: the jet black masses of four continents are connected with an all-white network. While many lines fan out from Singapore itself, Bahrain is particularly important scissors hub, the airline's sole Gulf destination acting as the only way station to six European hubs: London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Zürich, Athens, and Rome. Oriented eastward, Bahrain hosted Singapore flights from Bombay, Bangkok, and Colombo.

In East Asia itself, it is surprising to note how local the schedules ran: just to get up to Seoul or Tokyo required at least two stops in Hong Kong and Taipei. Already, the airline was well-oriented toward the Kangaroo Routes, with a criss-cross of long flights to Perth, Melbourne, and Sydney—although at the very least this map shows that a London-Sydney itinerary would have to pass through two other airports, at minimum, which doesn't seem so fly.

This item is reposted from Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal)'s photo stream. A special thank you to Doug as always for allowing creative commons licensing of his fantastic collection. 

Uzbekistan Airways: The International Network, c.2003-2008

In sharp contrast to the photo-generated graphics of the domestic routes, this iteration of Uzbekistan Airway's international network is a sharp, simple white-on-blue. Found on this antique Central Asian tourism website, it dates most likely to the middle of the last decade.

The broad reach of Uzbekistan Airways features fantastic array of destinations of four continents, most especially the flagship Tashkent-Riga-New York route: this pride-of-the-network HY101 survives to this day. There are a great many Russian destinations, and service to many of the Central Asian capitals: Almaty, Astana, Bishkek, Ashgabad, and Baku. One might put the flight to Urumqi, capital of Chinese Turkestan, in this same category. Seven other European airports are included, including Athens and Istanbul. More randomly are flights to Seoul, Osaka, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. Delhi is only less surprising than Lahore and Amritsar, while Jeddah, Dubai, Sharjah and Tel-Aviv round out the Middle East.

Looking at the roster from Wikipedia, a great many of these more random cities survive within the network today.

South African Airways: the Australasian routes, 2013

The East Asian and Australian section of South African Airways' route map, from its inflight magazine in mid-2013, shows as many services of other carriers in the Star Alliance as it does of its own operations, which consist only of flights from Johannesburg to Beijing, Hong Kong, and Perth. Flights to Singapore on Singapore Airlines and Bangkok on Thai Airways from Joberg are shown. A fan of flights from Hong Kong to Seoul on Asiana and several Japanese cities on All Nippon fill up northeastern Asia. The Qantas flight to Sydney is shown, which weaves into a network of Air New Zealand flights to Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch.

Finnair to Asia, March 2013

Few carriers in the world have turned their geographic lemons into lemonade as Finnair, whose dominant strategy in the last 10-15 years has been to look beyond its own tiny home market to become a dominant carrier between Europe and the distant destinations of Asia. This began in the late 1990s with succesful runs to major mixed business/leisure hubs from Tokyo to Hong Kong to Bangkok and Singapore. Today, this includes a daring strategy to link second-tier mainland Chinese cities, such as Chongqing and Xi'an, with little Vantaa Airport in Helsinki, spanning Eurasia by linking European business centers with emerging megacapitals of the Far East, which later this year will include Ho Chi Minh City but was curiously unsuccessful in reaching Guangzhou.

The map above, an eye-catching global map from a web banner ad, shows 13 long-haul non stops. Also helpfully, and perhaps a little hopefully, the map shows the link to New York, suggesting a JFK to Japan journey via Scandinavia.

Delta Air Lines: the East Asia/Pacific Routes, January 2012

Continuing from the previous post, this detail of Delta's January 2012 route map shows the airline's numerous routes spreading out of its Tokyo Narita hub to Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Taipei, Busan, Seoul, Shanghai, Manila, the latter also served from Nagoya, whereas the Micronesian islands of Saipan, Guam and Palau are also served from mainland Japan, including Osaka-Kansai. Numerous routes lead off to the right to the United States, as shown in the previous post. A score of mainland Chinese cities, dotted in blue to indicate connection via SkyTeam parents such as Korean Air, China Eastern, and China Southern, beckons before the curvature of the earth at left.

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.

KLM: The East Asian Routes, October 2011

From KLM's Holland Herald in-flight magazine of last autumn: a route map of East Asia. Its easy to spot the Flying Dutch North-Holland sky-blue lines, spreading rightward from Schiphol (not shown) across the Asian landmass and bowing down to reach seven Chinese cities, a roster which includes the unusual intercontinental destinations of Chengdu, Xiamen, and Hangzhou-- the latter the so-called Amsterdam of the East, whose canal-laden center lies just a short drive south of Shanghai, which Royal Dutch Airlines also serves.

The map is made more difficult to read as all of the global SkyTeam partners' systems are crammed in as well, especially Korean Air's super vortex swirling out of Incheon, from whence it serves a number of mainland cities itself. As to China, a spaghetti of orange lines wraps across the Middle Kingdom, representing China Southern Airlines's vast system. Guangzhou is enlarged to represent its home hub, although this is not a city which KLM has successfully connected with Amsterdam. While it is nearly impossible to make sense of the several secondary Chinese cities' connections--one can barely make out Chongqing, for instance--it is a bit easier to read China Southern's operations out of far-west Ürümqi.

Further south, the barbell network of Vietnam Airlines, one of the more minor SkyTeam partners, blasts out of the bipoles of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Shenzhen Airlines Destinations, 2012.

Like Chengdu, the southern supercity of Shenzhen has its own namesake airline.

Unlike the posts from earlier this month, the super-dense city labels of Shenzhen Airlines's destination map are Romanized, but feature some interesting spellings, seemingly rendered directly from Chinese: Urumqi is transcribed as Wulumuqi, and Harbin is Haerbin. Like Hainan Airlines, the route network that connects these cities in not featured, so it is difficult to determine just how interconnected these cities are.

The next post will detail some of the southernly services, including an array of international flights to many of the capitals of southeast Asia.

Hainan Airlines and Hong Kong Airlines: Some of the Routes Operated. Post #2: HKA Destinations

A second post of the same item, labeling the destinations of Hong Kong Airlines across the mainland PRC, Southeast Asia from Hanoi to Denpasar, Bali; Japan, and Moscow.

Thai Airways International: Worldwide Network, 1985

Although not the size and reach of the present day, Thai Airways at the end of the 1980s already at the impressive reach, as the sharp angled geometry of this unique route map so dashingly illustrates: from the half-hexagon of the Tokyo-Seattle-Dallas/Fort Worth jaunt, to the fingers spreading across the Middle East, although these hit on contemporary destinations such as Riyadh, Dhahran, and Kuwait instead of the 21st century trifecta of Doha, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

From here, the lines continue west, extending into a knot of European destinations, among them Athens, Rome, and Copenhagen--Thai is still today virtually the only Asian presence at Kastrup. Despite the angularity of the route lines, the relative positions of cities are generally true, with the lone exception of Muscat, shown somewhere north of Baghdad in an offshoot of the link between Karachi and Paris.

Closer to the center of its world, the map's thick marks show multiple links across East and South Asia, with dense operations particularly in Hong Kong, Taipei and Singapore as well as smaller cities from Kathmandu to Osaka, as well as four cities in Australia. Thai Airways lived up to the "International" in its name, years before it reached New York and Los Angeles.

Route map from the abundant archives of flightglobal.com

Aircalin Network, 2011

A much sleeker interface greets the visitor to Aircalin's 2011 website, compared to the grainy réseau of just three years earlier, shown in the previous post. The only major addition to the network is Seoul, suggesting the increasing importance of Asian visitors to the archipelago. Wallis and Futuna are shown as separate nodes, showing a link between the two fellow francophone islands.

Beyond this, the carte includes cooperative networks with (unspecified) Australian and New Zealand carriers to other antipodean cities via Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland, demonstrating how easily Aircalin's network can be reached via these gateways. The new map also shows more distant destinations at its edges: Honolulu, Ho Chi Minh Ville, and Hong Kong; Shanghai and Singapour, Bali and Bangkok, and even Los Angeles, suggesting an expansionary eye toward linking New Caledonia with California, and China.

Aircalin Network, c.2008

Aircalin, the international airline of New Caledonia, France's largest overseas department in the Pacific, stretched from Auckland and Australia to Asia in 2008 in this grainy .jpg sourced from this website.

Japan saw multiweekly A330 flights to Osaka and Tokyo. More regionally Aircalin linked together the other French possessions in the Pacific, from Papeete, Tahiti, in Polynesia, to tiny Wallis et Futuna north of Fiji, as well as nearby Vanuatu (now independent, once an Anglo-French condominium). The major cities of Australia and New Zealand, primary sources of tourists, were also reached.

Hainan Airlines, Fall 2008

The global reach of Hainan Airlines in late 2008, when it had already arrived in Europe and the United States, but had yet to expand to become China's fourth largest airline and that country's only 5-star Skytrax carrier. In those intervening years, Hainan has expanded to serve more than 500 routes to more than 90 destinations, growing hugely in its own country, and extending to Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia.

Still based in Haikou, Hainan Island, the airline's present intercontinental operations are focused on Beijing, and now boasts flights to 5 cities in Russia, including Moscow; Almaty; Toronto; Luanda via Dubai; Khartoum; Berlin; and Sydney. Before the end of the year plans include new service to Kolkata, Colombo and Zürich, and the return of Cairo.

Korean Air: Japanese & Siberian Destinations, 2011

Korea and Japan engage in an enormous trading partnership, so it is no surprise that there is a dense web of air links between the two neighbors, as well as a link two the Siberian city of Vladivostok, Russia's principal Pacific port. Tokyo International Airport at Haneda and New Tokyo International Airport at Narita are both served from Incheon and Gimpo airports outside of Seoul.