Surinam Airways Network, 2012

A colorful constellation of countries and constituencies shows the recent extent of Surinam Airways's routes. For certain the geography is not to scale, as tiny Curaçao is more massive than giant Brazil, and the compact Netherlands is as large as Florida. Belem is shown nearly as far away as the distant Dutch home country. A similar version shown on Flickr shows neighboring Georgetown, Guyana.

Surinam Airways Network, 2010-2012

As vintage as this map may seem graphically, the A340 was only acquired by Surinam Airways in November 2009, so the image must be relatively recent. From its base at Paramaribo, the state carrier flies up and down the brow of South America, from Belem in Brazil and up into the West Indies, linking Port of Spain with the Dutch-associated Aruba and Curaçao, but surprisingly not Bonaire. The Caribbean connection finally terminates at Miami, from where, the map indicates, other airlines connect to unspecified American cities.

Barbados, as well as Georgetown, Guyana, and Cayenne, French Guiana, are all shown but seemly not part of the system.

Quite apart from this regional spread is the airline's pride of service, for which the diminutive carrier has employed wide body jumbos and quad-engined Airbuses: the trans-Atlantic span to the seat of the former colonial power: Amsterdam. Weekly flights run nonstop to Schiphol.

SAS: Map of the Long-Haul Routes, 1973

The impressive five-continent Scandinavian Airlines System in 1973, a gem of incredible collection of flickr user caribb. Here is the left-hand portion, showing the Western Hemisphere and the African continent.

SAS used Central and Southern European airports as more temperate way-stations for many of its transocean crossings: Zürich and Athens appear to be particularly large bases for the African routes, and the South American connection clearly stops at Lisbon, from whence it continues to Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Santiago. A second southern Atlantic routing runs through Robertsfield in Monrovia on the way to Rio de Janeiro.

East African routes reach Entebbe and Nairobi from Europe before proceeding further southward, spurring off at Dar Es Salaam and terminating at Johannesburg. Today Scandinavian does not even land at Cairo.

The North American network is much less different today: there are still transpolar non stops from Stockholm and Copenhagen to Newark and Chicago, but not New York-JFK. Seattle was a long-lasting station which closed only a few years ago, and Los Angeles, Toronto, and Montreal have all been dropped. The Scandinavian Airlines of the 21st century has also completely retreated from Africa, the Caribbean and South America.

Special thanks again to Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal) for both assembling an outstanding collection of vintage airline literature, and making it available to others via Creative Commons terms.

BWIA: Caribbean Network, 1967.

A luscious vintage brochure from British West Indian Airways from 1967, when Barbados and Trinidad were in their first years of independence, and Antigua and other islands were still colonies of the crown.

Ruler-sharp red lines span the Windward Islands, connecting each to Barbados, with its direct service to both Georgetown and New York. Several straight lines terminate at Port-of-Spain to stretch across the brow of South America.

A dense web of island-hopping services across the Leewards includes Beef Island off of Tortola, with a number of lines ending at San Juan. Trans-ocean routes from Antigua branch off toward New York JFK and Miami, with a planned pan-Atlantic route to London Heathrow just in planning, "subject to government approval" (it was soon authorized). BWIA enjoyed decades of glory before sadly coming to an end on the last day of 2006, remade as Caribbean Airlines.

Pan Am: Miami to Africa, 1941

More history of the Cape Verde coast as global node. This particular envelope from December 6, 1941, celebrates Pan Am's first arrival in Bathurst, Gambia (today Banjul). More broadly, the deep, dynamic illustration shows a flying boat clipper which originates at Miami and reaches the equator via San Juan and Port of Spain, calling at Belem and Natal in Brazil, before crossing the ocean and reaching Bathurst. From there it appears to extend to Lagos and on to Leopoldville. As with the previous post, Dakar did not get the glory.