Qatar Airways Route Network, November 2016: East Asia

While Qatar Airways's global coverage thins out as it reaches the Pacific, the airline offers a respectable seven gateways into China, including Hangzhou, Chengdu, and Chongqing—one of the few external airlines to serve these secondary Chinese cities. Qatar Airways is also one of only a handful of airlines to serve Clark Airport in Subic Bay, in the Philippines—although Emirates also flies non-stop from Dubai, presumably as a conduit for labor migrants to the Gulf region. 

Etihad Route Map, September 2016: East Asia & Australia

Continuing on from the previous post, the right-hand side of Etihad's route map shows its presence in East Asia and the key Australian routes, including Melbourne and Sydney, two of the airline's five A380 destinations. Beijing—Nagoya is a rare non-direct-to-Abu Dhabi connection for Etihad, which even has fifth-freedom rights within the route. Likewise, Chengdu is a rather daring entry into central China in what is otherwise a strategy strictly limited to primary cities—perhaps the airline was stung by the failure of its Chonqing service—one of only a handful cities that Etihad has retreated from. Qatar Airways has followed Etihad, launching flights to Chengdu in 2013. 

Emirates Route Map, August 2016: The Global Routes

Since last year, Emirates undertook a redesign of their increasingly-complex route map. This stunning, dynamic work of pseudo-Dymaxion cartography is the result.

Over the next week, each page and inset of the route map will be posted in detail. This is page one, showing the red superhighways of superjumbos bolting out of Dubai like a network of refinery pipelines (fitting for a Gulf carrier). Africa, East Asia and Australasia are shown fully; South Asia and the Middle East are blank. Likewise, Europe is left mostly empty, except as it indicates the trans-Atlantic routes, which are shown passing polarwise for North America and in a trans-equatorial conduit across central Africa.

This map best represents the far Asian routes from Beijing to Bangkok and, as was discussed in the last post, the megadarrier's predominance in the Southeast Asia—Australia market and the trans-Tasman airspace, the interconnections between Bangkok and Singapore and the major Australian cities, and onward to Auckland.

Thai Airways Route Table: Routes from Phuket and elsewhere, November 2016

As shown in the previous post from yesterday, the remarkable Route Table in the back of Thai Airways's in-flight magazine indexes every route of the airline. After listing all the routes out of Bangkok, the remainder is given over to flights from other airports.

While many are leisure routes direct from Phuket, namely Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and St ockholm, there is a direct trans-border hop from northern Chiang Mai to Kunming in neighboring Yunnan province, and a somewhat anachronistic link between Karachi and Muscat, recalling pan-Asian journeys of an earlier era.Likewise, the Taipei—Seoul route shows the vestiges of the decades when a handful of flag carriers operated across East Asia.

Equally fascinating are a pair of what might be categorized as religious routes: Gaya—Varanasi—Bangkok (these two cities premiering here on The Timetablist). These services clearly reflect the importance of Hindu pilgrimages to Thai's customer base. The closest examples to these types of operations would be Aer Lingus's pilgrimage operations of an earlier era, which are now almost entirely covered by charter operations. 

Thai Airways: The International Routes, 2013

Like Garuda (not to mention Malaysia Airlines), Thai Airways International is still a going concern but is significantly smaller than it has been in the past. This table, from the back of Thai Airway's inflight magazine from 2013, illustrates the point. Information listing the airline's international services from Bangkok from R—Z, with Rome no longer a destination. A handful of secondary leisure routes are shown thereafter, such as Copenhagen—Phuket and Stockholm—Phuket, and intra-Asian flights such as Hong Kong—Seoul and Hong Kong—Taipei, as well as the old Seoul—Los Angeles route which was removed from the schedule in 2015 after 35 years of service.

Also interesting here are the number of routes to tertiary Indian cities, specifically Varanasi and Gaya, presumably as pilgrimage sites. 

Aeroflot: From Berlin to Asia via Moscow, July 2015

Elsewhere in the under-sized spaces of Berlin Tegel's main terminal A, hang a few banner adverts affixed to the ceiling. Here, Aeroflot tailors its offerings to the passengers below: given the chronic and increasingly dire under capacity of the diminutive Tegel, and the scandalously, incessantly delayed opening of Berlin-Brandenburg, there are surprisingly few long-haul options for travelers from the capital of Europe's largest economy.

Here, the Russian flag carrier boasts of an easy connection to far-flung destinations in east Asia: Hanoi, Phuket and Beijing (here showing how the Germans still say Peking), for example, all via Moscow Sheremetyevo. The campaign might not have been as successful as expected, as currently Aeroflot only serves Schönefeld, just adjacent to Berlin's perennial airport-of-the-future, which may never open.

Air Berlin: The Long-haul Destinations from Munich, summer 2013

A somewhat clever transit-map styling of an Air Berlin wall advert at the Munich Airport U-bahn station, showing the diverse long-haul destinations, which by and large are leisure markets. Four continents are covered: from Phuket and Bangkok in Thailand, and Male in the Maldives, to Mombasa in Kenya and Windhoek in Namibia (the latter two, sadly, seem to have since been dropped from the network). In the Americas, Miami, New York and Los Angeles are complimented by Caribbean resort towns such as Cancún. On the red horizontal line, further sun-and-beach destinations are separated from the more urban trio of Barcelona, Moscow, and Vienna. Strangely, the device isn't carried all the way through, as there is no interchange station in the center where the two lines intersect.

Thai Smile Advertisement, early 2013

An advertisement for THAI Smile, a low-cost subsidiary of Thai Airways founded in 2012, which flies an all-A320 fleet from Bangkok across Thailand, but stretches as far east as Macau, and offers international flights from Phuket to Mumbai, Ahmedabad, “New Delhi,” and Kuala Lumpur.

Hainan Airlines and Hong Kong Airlines: Some of the Routes Operated, 2012.

A map of "some of the routes" from Hainan Airlines's most-recent timetable, showing its services to Europe, Asia, Africa and North America, with a second array of more regional routes of Hong Kong Airlines from Chep Lap Kok, which are detailed in the next post.

Note that the airlines only overlap at Beijing, Moscow, and Bangkok, but that the latter is shown twice in a layout which only approximates the true geographic relations of the destinations.

Thai Airways: The Domestic Network, November 2008

The domestic and regional reach of Thai Airways, as shown in its in-flight guide as of November 2008. Almost all of the routes fan out from Bangkok, although Phuket and Udon Thani are connected to the northern capital of Chiang Mai. The only trans-border destination shown here is Phnom Penh.