Athens Departure Board, 19 August 2017 (1)

 Two hours of mid-morning departures at Athens during what is by far the busiest time of year: the mid-August tourist rush. This block of flights are split between European connections: Geneva on Swiss, Istanbul on Turkish, Schönefeld and Orly on Easyjet—with a contingent of the airport's constant bank of domestic flights. 

The storied Olympic name is still in use—a brand bought out of bankruptcy and now operating as only a prop-plane domestic carrier—with flights to Heraklion, Santorini, Kalamata in southwestern Peleponnese, and a squadron of Cycladic flights all departing at 10:40 to spread to Naxos, Paros, Mykonos and the Ionian isle of Zakynthos. 

Olympic is not alone in the Greek domestic airspace: smaller private upstart Ellinair links to the northern secondary city of Thessaloniki, where is has its home base. Romanian low-cost airline Blue Air flies to the world's only other Greek-speaking state, Cyprus, and its main airport at Larnaca. There is a second flight to Larnaca at 10:35, showing a codeshare with Air Canada. This is on Aegean, which is today the de facto Greek flag carrier and parent company to Olympic. The extent of Aegean's pan-European reach is indicated by the less-common destinations on the board: Dubrovnik and Lisbon. 

Lufthansa: Lost Destinations from the Summer of 2012

For space considerations, the other (non-Russian) worldly destinations that have lost their Lufthansa patronage since 2012 have been cordoned into this separate post. There are three continents hosting less Lufthansa than before, but the only mainline European city that is out is tiny Trondheim, Norway (a first for the Timetablist here), which was curiously served once a week by an aging B737-400.

Asia has been particularly affected: the long-haul connections to Jakarta (via Singapore) and Kuala Lumpur  (via Bangkok) could consistently work. More recently, Lufthansa has lost out to the Gulf three, and curtailed its dedicated flight to Abu Dhabi, and truncated the Muscat extension of its Frankfurt-Riyadh flights (although LX243, the Zürich-Dubai-Muscat connection on SWISS listed here, still operates today).

More dire but less surprising are the loss of further African services: no news that Tripoli has been abandoned, and Pointe-Noire's petrol-club PrivatAir B737-800 service via Libreville had its run, but less happy the abandonment of once-promising Asmara and long-served Khartoum, surely and sadly uneconomic nowadays.  Also, lamentably, Caracas has likewise sunk into a less-viable abyss and receives fewer and fewer international airlines.  Lufthansa closed down its Venezuelan outpost in May this year. 

Nairobi Departures, April 30, 2013 #1

 The departures from about 5:30pm on April 30, 2013 at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi, Kenya, showing a pair take-offs for the Gulf, with Emirates to Dubai and Qatar to Doha, followed by a bank of long-hauls to Europe, starting with British Airways to London Heathrow, Swiss to Zurich, Brussels Airlines to Zavantem in Brussels, followed by a South African flight to Johannesburg and a Turkish flight to Istanbul. Both Kenya Airways and SAA have later flights to Jo'berg as well, and there is a second departure to Doha later on. These wide body flights are interspersed with regional services by Kenya, Air Uganda, and others to regional capitals such as Juba, Dar Es Salaam, and Entebbe Airport outside of Kampala.

Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta Airport International Departures, 30 April 2013, #2

The second screen of the international departures board for NBO on the night of 30 April shows activity through the night at this 24-hour airport; no restrictions on small-hour activity, perhaps because there is so little.

In the 35 minutes before midnight, Kenya Airways has two long-hauls: to Guangzhou via Bangkok, and London-Heathrow. There is a shorter flight to Bujumbura and Kigali.

SWISS leaves for Zürich, one of the last African services for the airline which formerly served a dozen sub-Saharan cities. After an almost two-and-a-half hour pause, Brussels Airlines leaves for Brussels via Kigali. Turkish Airlines takes a dead-zone departure time to fly to Istanbul, a curious time slot, and just before sunrise, Ethiopian operates the first of several daily flights to Addis Ababa.

By daylight, activity picks up. KQ leaves for Johannesburg, and follows in the next hour with departures to Dar Es Salaam, Juba, Yaounde, and a link to Lilongwe and Lusaka. Air Uganda's first flight to Entebbe leaves at the same time. African Express leaves for Berbera and Mogadishu at 7am.

Boston Logan International Departures, April 2008

The evening departure board for the International Terminal E at Boston Logan Airport on Sunday, April 27, 2008. Between 6:20 an 9:40pm, there were ten flights to eight European cities on on eight airlines. Although only mid-Spring, Northwest Airlines was offering its two departures to Amsterdam Schiphol, as it still does on a summer schedule (although today it is Delta out of Terminal A). Northwest operated all its flights out of Terminal E, which is why Indianapolis and Detroit are shown during the 19:00 hour.

London is by far Logan's busiest overseas connection: here are two flights on British Airways and Virgin Atlantic to Heathrow, while over at Terminal B an American Airlines flight was also preparing to follow. Aer Lingus's departures to both sides of the Emerald Isle leave one after the other, the second stopping in Shannon. Other European flag carriers include Lufthansa to Munich, Iberia to Madrid, SWISS to Zurich, and Icelandair to Reykjavík, which lands at Keflavík International in a few short hours.

Brussels Airport Departure Board #3

Mid-afternoon at Brussels Airport in early January 2012 shows a number of flights to nearby European cities. One interesting departure is FlyBE's flight to the Isle of Man via Southampton, followed a quarter of an hour later is airBaltic's flight to its Riga home base. Small flights on Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa, KLM, LOT, Swiss, and BMI take off thereafter. The only non-European destination after 1:00PM is Egyptair's non-stop MS726 to Cairo.