Turkish Airlines to Port Harcourt, 2019

Continuing from the previous post, Turkish Airlines has grown over the last decade to become the airline serving the most destinations of any carrier on the planet. Much of this expansive roster has come via a comprehensive African strategy, serving far more cities on the continent than any European or Middle Eastern carrier. Here is a magazine advertisement from last year boasting of the addition of the airline's third Nigerian city: the southern petrol hub of Port Harcourt in the Niger Delta, which is now connected to Istanbul along with Lagos, Abuja, although it is somewhat unclear whether Turkish still flies to Kano—records suggest this flight was stopped several years ago.

Nigeria Airways, May 1979, 2 of 2: Detail of Domestic Network

A detail of the previous post, shown the domestic network of Nigeria Airways in May 1979; a barbell system with poles at Lagos in the south and Kano in the north. 

Chanchangi Route Map, c.2010

This item from the dusty archives of The Timetablist's dusty archives is an undated relic of the low-graphic era of a decade ago, when Chanchangi Air Lines was a means of travel within Nigeria. The 8-bit emblem of the airline and the card-deck zoom-in of the map of Nigeria further limit the sophistication of the visual message. 

Unlike the previous post, Yola was not served, but Port Harcourt and Kaduna apparently were, including an especially short hop between Abuja and Kaduna. 

Med-View Airline: Lagos to Jeddah, November 2017

An enticing picture of the corniche of Jeddah glows from Med-View Airline's social media accounts a year on from the previous post. However, Med-View does not serve Jeddah directly from Lagos; instead the connection is Kaduna—Kano—Jeddah, resurrecting Kano's former role as the northern international gateway for all of Nigeria. 

Supplementally confusing is the city list at the bottom; while the destinations listed there are among those Med-View serves, several of them (Enugu, Ilorin, Owerri, and Port Harcourt) including many of the more ambitious (Baltimore, Houston, Johannesburg, Lisbon) are not served by the airline, and no plans have been announced. This, too, is reminiscent of earlier episodes in Nigeria's airline history. 

Med-View Airline: Commencing Two New Flights, September 6, 2013

Continuing with a survey of the changing landscape of Nigerian air carriers, The Timetablist features MedView Airline here for the first time. Styled as Med-View on the side of its growing fleet of aircraft, like many of the other upstarts, started recently but has been fast-expanding into the vacuum left by the near-fatal collapse of Arik Air.

Med-View has recently emerged as Nigeria's de-facto flag carrier, listing on the country's stock exchange in July and launching prestigious Dubai and London connections formerly operated by Arik, (although the London flights are merely to Gatwick and the Dubai routes have since been shifted to seasonal services). Indeed, the airline now festoons "The Airline of Nigeria" on its cheat-line.

Before that push, Med-View began as a domestic carrier, as shown above on this graphic from four years ago, although it's not entirely clear if the airline is stating that the new routes from September 2013 are Port Harcourt to Abuja and Lagos to Enugu. 

IRS Airlines Advertisement, c.2007

If Arik Air doesn't offer the right route or a convenient schedule, the Nigerian air traveler's next option, at least a decade ago, might have been the reassuringly named IRS Airlines, which is even more non-Nigerian and strangely American in its livery, with a red-white-and-yellow emblem in the shape of an eagle's head, like a rejected US Postal Service logo, as seen on this magazine advertisement from about ten years ago, which marks the premier of this airline on The Timetablist.

What is not so reassuring is that the airline's Facebook Page has not been updated since 2011, and the airline's website isn't loading. Who knows where the initials came from, but at one point this curious carrier linked much of northern Nigeria, including Kano, Kaduna, Maiduguri, Sokoto, and Yola with Abuja and Lagos as well as southern cities like Benin, Port Harcourt and Owerri.

Dana Air Destinations, 2017

Down is up in this social media graphic from Dana Air, which at least seems to clarify its exact route network, although somewhat upside down, as Lagos is in the south, Abuja in the north, and Uyo in the far southeast. Based on this, it seems impossible to fly non-stop on Nigeria's trunk route, the air bridge between the capital Abuja and the commercial megacity, Lagos, unless this flow-chart is merely stylistic and doesn't, in fact, reflect the airline's operations. 

Dana Air Destinations, 2017

Continuing from the previous post, another social media graphic from Dana Air, showing its "daily flights" between 5 Nigerian cities: Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Uyo, and Owerri.

Dana Air: Lagos-Accra-Lagos Promotion, March 2016

Another of Nigeria's private sector airlines is Dana Air, which started flying in 2008 and is featured here on The Timetablist for the first time. Like Air Peace and Arik Air, have shunned the slightest inclusion of green in their liveries, ensuring no association with the state. And like Air Peace, Dana Air runs domestically between the big three airports: Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt, while also serving, somewhat more randomly, the city of Uyo in the far southeast, formerly in Cross River State.  

While those cities are listed several times on this social media post from two years ago, the main focus of the promotion is on the Lagos—Accra vv., the airline's lone international operation, which at some point in the last two years has been withdrawn: the airline has reverted to solely domestic operations, although the airline has subsequently added flights to Owerri.

Air Peace: Lago-Accra Daily, February 2017

Accra has become established as perhaps the principal aviation cross-roads of West Africa, with the appearance of such unusual carriers as Cronos and CEIBA Intercontinental, as referenced in posts from earlier this month. Even more central to its position in the region is the importance of flights to Nigeria, most especially the critical Accra-Lagos air bridge, the busiest air corridor in all of West and Central Africa (although still minuscule in comparison to other famous shuttle routes such as São Paulo-Rio, Boston-New York-Washington, or Madrid-Barcelona, etc. 

The Timetablist has repeatedly featured the tragic circumstance of the short-lived Nigerian Air Carrier, be it the long-lost Nigeria Airways itself, or its series of successors, most famously in the last decade the Virgin Nigeria-Air Nigeria saga, which is now repeated with near-exact trajectory by the once-proud and now much-diminished Arik Air; it would be shocking if not so repetitive. 

In place of these companies now comes the latest and most-curious generation, which will be the subject of The Timetablist for the remainder of the month. These airlines are universally unusual and unreassuring in their appearance and appellation, all the moreso for their short lifespan. 

This particular transporter, named Air Peace, was established in 2013 and premiers in The Timetablist here for the first time. The company heightened its profile in February of this year by the introduction of a daily Lagos-Accra return schedule, performed by one the airline's various B737s—whether purchased or leased, the 733s and 735s are all of about 1997 vintage, which at least accords with the anachronistic paint scheme. 

Comfort is not further provided in this announcement, as while it is all well to feature the airline's other destinations, all domestic, the Coming Soon section surely invites only ridicule, or else Air Peace is on an expansion plan of historic efforts. Abidjan, Dakar, Douala and Niamey are reasonable achievable; London, Dubai, and Johannesburg certainly less-so, although Arik, and Virgin Nigeria in an earlier age, made similar plans. However, Atlanta, Mumbai, and the expansion simply referred to as 'China' seem to perhaps be more likely to require "more long wait."

Cronos Airlines Route Map, May 2017

Continuing from the previous post, the focus this week is on little Cronos Airlines, a privately-held Equatoguinean air carrier, flies to a half-dozen West African cities from its hub at tiny Malabo. 

Arik Air: the domestic destinations, c.2013

A detail from the previous post, showing Arik Air's domestic destinations: twenty cities across Nigeria, from Calabar to Katsina, in addition to the two hubs of Abuja and Lagos. Presumably the network is nearly identical to what has been featured before on the Timetablist, but has never been presented in the lipstick lustre of this ticket office display banner.

Flight Connections from São Tomé & Príncipe, c.2009

A lost fragment of the internet, this orphan gif, a visual explanation of flight connections to tiny São Tomé & Príncipe, on not-particularly-recent vintage.

The microscopic archipelago is hardly a hub of anything, other than delicious and rare cocoa, but on this map it is the crossroads of the center of the map, the closest republic to where the prime meridian meets the equator. Or, at least, the Lusophone eastern hemisphere.

Luanda and Lisbon are linked, the former via TAAG Angolan Airlines, which still to this day continues on to Sal de Cabo Verde, the latter via TAP (of course) but something else called STP Airways, the acronym denoting the little-known state carrier. Lagos and Libreville are also looped in, the first via Ceiba, the Equatoguinean state carrier, the latter via something simply labelled 'air service.' How perfectly vague.

Douala in nearby Cameroon is served by SCD, an unknown acronym, which may be related to African Connection Airways, which apparently provides air service on the island which may, or may not, include Malabo, Port Harcourt, Brazzaville, Port-Gentil, Pointe-Noire and even Bangui, if its own map is to be believed. TAP is apparently re-routing its services as of July 1st via Accra.

Nigeria Airways: Domestic Network, November 1981

The most obvious difference in juxtaposing the route map of Nigeria Airways in 1981 with Arik Air in 2012 is the centralization around hubs that has taken place in those decades. Here, the state carrier offered a diversity of linkages between major cities, with an array of flights connecting Kano, Jos, Enugu, Benin City and Kaduna. Even Yola and Markurdi have multiple options (although as with all route networks, the frequency of such flights is not clear).

Aside from the intricacy of this web,  the complete absence of Abuja is obvious. Today, this myriad span of domestic flights has been rationalized around a two-hub system split between Lagos and Abuja. Although airlines worldwide have consolidated into hub-and-spoke systems, it is tempting to see this transition as an allegory for the fate of the federal state and Nigerian society in these ensuing years.

As noted previously, Kano's status as a northern hub and intercontinental gateway has been erased. Note that the Ibadan-Benin City-Calabar service was suspended at the time.

See the previous post for Nigeria Airways's international network from 1981.

Arik Air: Domestic flights, October 2012

Following on from the previous post, the small corner detail of Arik Air's two-page route map spread shows the domestic operations of the de-facto flag carrier. Here, the airline's signature red and blue colors are used to differentiate operations out of Lagos Murtala Muhammed from flights fanning out of Abuja's Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, which actually has connections to more cities than the much larger commercial capital, acting as a hub in the middle of the country.

Virgin Atlantic: African operations, June 2013

A visual from Virgin Atlantic's mobile app, showing the airline's African destinations as of this summer: Accra, Lagos, Cape Town, and Johannesburg, with the interactive showing single jet launching north from Murtala Mohammed to London Heathrow.

Virgin Atlantic's other destinations on the continent, Nairobi, Port Harcourt and Abuja have not lasted, although the airline's website still offers a destination guides to the latter two. Nor, somewhat surprisingly, has Accra, which, perhaps due to high fuel costs of operating a quad-engined A340 on the route, will end on 23 September of this year. Mauritius also did not last, although it and Nairobi are still bizarrely listed on its website. And, it should be noted, Cape Town is only seasonal.

Air Nigeria Destinations, October 2012

With the renewed uncertainty around Antrak Air's airworthiness in the wake of a recent engine fire, yesterday's post recalls an earlier West African airline collapse, the sad demise of Air Nigeria, the once-proud Branson-backed venture which suspended operations in September 2012 after a number of rebrandings and a steady decline. Despite its diminished state, Air Nigeria's denouement had a major impact on West African air travelers. Nearly a month after its death, the door of Air Nigeria's ticket office in the international departure hall of Accra's Kotoka Airport sports its various destination in West Africa.

Arik Air: The Domestic Services, c.2009

A crude, sharply-angled paint-graphic file, showing a young Arik Air's domestic network sometime in or around 2009, via this website. Nigeria's shape is approximated in a crude, ivory cut-out, overlapping the surrounding landmass, with pixelated borders, routes and labels.

The already fast-growing Nigerian carrier linked Lagos to 8 cities, with extra connections between the Federal capital, Abuja, and the important oil ports of the southern Delta, Port Harcourt (misspelled above) and Calabar.

A more recent and much slicker cartography is displayed on Arik's own website (posted recently here), which shows a wider network domestically--but still almost entirely centered around Lagos and Abuja, although the airline now stretches from New York to Johannesburg.

Arik Air: The Domestic Network from Lagos, 2011

In addition to its strong base at the Federal Capital, Abuja, in the center of the country, Arik Air focuses heavily on the country's megacity, the erstwhile capital, Lagos, on the coast.

Routes here connect more to the oil-heavy Delta region in the southeast, than to the northern portion of the country. Not shown here, Arik flies regionally as far as Dakar and also links Lagos to Johannesburg, London, and New York.

Arik Air: The Domestic Network from Abuja, 2011

In the aftermath of the collapse of first Nigeria Airways in 2003, then beloved Bellview in 2009, followed by the tortuous decline of Virgin Nigeria's once-grand plans for global presence, which underwent a confused transition to Nigeria Eagle Airlines and finally to the muted but still-competent Air Nigeria, Africa's most populous country seemed to lack a flag carrier.

But lately and quickly, that position has been taken on by the young Arik Air, which in a few years of operation has achieved what Virgin Nigeria once dreamed of: non-stop flights to the trifecta of premier destinations: New York, London and Johannesburg, which have been operated heretofore by A340-500s wet-leased from a Portuguese vendor.

The latest achievement is the news this week was that Arik has been granted FAA approval to fly its own, Nigerian-registered aircraft into the United States-- the first Nigerian airline in decades to enjoy this privilege.

Beyond its global ambitions, Arik has a strong domestic presence, shown in this and the following post, with two bases: one at the Federal Capital, Abuja, shown with the white aircraft hovering over a blue map, above, and the other at Murtala Mohammed Airport at Lagos, shown in the next entry.