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. 

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.

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."

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.

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.

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 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.

Nigeria Airways: Detail of the Domestic and Regional Network, April 1966

Still Nigeria Airways, still all pink. The state airways corporation operated a zig-zaging domestic network, shown here as an inset of the previous post from April 1966.

Note how, in a wonderfully curious gesture, an arrow points northeast from Maiduguri, promoted as a gateway to the Middle and Far East. The North-Eastern State, gateway to Baghdad and Hong Kong. Today, Maiduguri has barely a handful of weekly domestic flights.

Kano, Nigeria's oldest airport, was the starting gate of the northern routes to Europe for both Nigeria Airways and other airlines, and at least today still has intercontinental attention from KLM.

Virgin Nigeria Network: July, 2009

Virgin Nigeria is slowly being rebranded as Nigeria Eagle Airlines, as Sir Richard has apparently had enough of doing business in Nigeria. Can't blame him for giving it a go and sticking with it, though. Its not that bad, either: new planes, relatively low fares (by African standards, anyway). It didn't ever sustain its ambitious plans, however, as this route map, from one of its last published in-flight magazines, shows. The London and Johannesburg flights were a bit erratic, its reported. Timetablist can also confirm that Virgin Atlantic itself was sometimes seen landing in Nigeria: Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt, if mental archives are reliable...

The other page from the route map is totally irrelevant as truth but a ponderous exercise in wishful thinking. VK never made it across the Atlantic, despite the abundant traffic between New York, Houston, Washington and Nigeria. Another Nigerian line, Arik Air, has quietly inaugurated a JFK service, which seems to be doing well despite the recent added security to Nigerian air travelers.