Azerbaijan Airlines Timetable, 2016 (Post 2 of 2)

Continuing from the previous post, the second page of Azerbaijan Airlines's inflight magazine shows the airline's pair of domestic routes, from Baku to Ganja, (Gəncə in Azeri) the country's second largest city, in the northwest, and Nakhchivan in Autonomous exclave, separated from Azerbaijan proper by part of Armenia. The two secondary airports are connected to each other  as well, and there is a twice-weekly service to St. Petersburg. The only other service not asterisked as a non-codeshare flight is the twice-weekly Baku-Minsk service. Today, the airline still connects to both domestic cities to Baku's Heydar Aliyev International Airport. 

AZALJET Timetable, 2016

This may be one of the only timetables published of AZALJET, the low-cost leisure division of AZAL Azerbaijan Airlines, which was announced in February 2016 but folded in to the mainline operations barely a year later. 

AZALJET focused on two regions: The CIS region, especially Russia, including the critical trunk routes of Moscow (interestingly both Vnukovo and Domodedovo airports) and St. Petersburg, as well as Kiev and Lviv in Ukraine; Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, along with Mineralnye Vody, a city of 75,000 in Stavropol region of the Caucasus Mountains which is the last main town on the rail line between Russia and Baku, and makes its Timetablist debut here. 

The second set of routes connects to other regional cities including Tblisi, Georgia and Tabriz, the northwesternmost Iranian city that is almost more Azerbaijani than Persian. There are also a half-dozen Turkish cities, including the important routes to Ankara and Istanbul as well as Mediterranean leisure destinations such as Antalya, Bodrum, and Dalaman. 

The distinction between the main carrier and this low-cost unit was always quite blurred; there was hardly enough time to distinguish the two before AZALJet was closed down. This is reflected in the fleet listed in the right-most column: most flights are with A319s and A320s but there is the occasional B757 to Bodrum and Antalya, two flights per each weekday is operated with a B767, and even an A340 flies on one of the weekly rotations to Antalya until the end of August. 

Turkmenistan Airlines: Route Map, c.2016

This rather incredible specimen is featured on the non-official website of Turkmenistan Airlines—or at least one of the most prominent, as there is apparently more than one...which is in a way helpful, as the flag carrier of the Republic of Turkmenistan seems to lack an English language presence on the worldwide web. 

Despite this curious lack of official online connectivity, Turkmenistan Airlines does spread its gloriously evergreen-accented fleet across Asia and Europe, as seen here on this odd warp-grid projection which appears to converge at 0º Lattitude 0º Longitude, cut off at the bottom-left. 

Other than this Dr. Strangelove-sound-studio meets 2004 internet aesthetic, the route network itself is is also a bit skewed, with different cities in larger and smaller typeface at random, "Pekin" Minsk, Moscow and Frankfurt seem important, Amritsar, Donetsk, Istanbul and Lviv somehow less so. This usual airline shows up in a few unexpected places, especially its farthest western reach, "Birminghem," which does not see very much foreign metal, nor does it seem to possess a Central Asian community of any size, yet has apparently captured a segment of the Midlands-to-India market. 

There was a rather severe hiccup when the airline was banned from European Union air space from February to late 2019, which left passengers suddenly stranded, met with an abundance of Turkic bureaucratic indifference with total institutional apathy to get customers home. 

These route maps appear to have preceded that episode, as there is some reporting that the network shifted more recently: Ankara and Kuala Lumpur were intermittently added  while London and the several Ukrainian cities have all been dropped, while the most recent development has been a new service to Jeddah utilizing the carrier's pride-of-fleet B777-200, but this has been delayed under the present circumstances. 

ČSA Czechoslovak Airlines Route Map, c.1975: Detail of the Bratislava Hub

Continuing to view the details of the Czechoslovak Airlines route map from the 1970s, the upper-right of the pinwheel shows the airline's secondary operation at Bratislava, the Slovak capital. Prague dominated not only the "OK Network" but also nearly every other aspect of Czechoslovak public sphere, yet the expansive ČSA system granted Bratislava with an interesting variety of connections: to nearby Poprad-Tatry, via Bourgas, and a half dozen other Eastern Bloc capitals. Also Beirut and  Kuwait, rather randomly.

Cartographically, what's curious is that these destinations were all printed a second time to show a shower of routes springing forth from Bratislava. Kuwait, Sofia, Bucharest and Beirut are all served from Prague and shown elsewhere on the map, although more at 5 o'clock which might have made the graphics a bit convoluted. Stranger are Moscow, Kiev, and Leningrad, whose links to Prague are directly adjacent to the Bratislava point, as seen here.

Warsaw and Berlin-Helsinki (here weirdly rendered as Helsink) are at high noon, from Prague.

Interflug Timetable, Winter 1975-76, Part 1

The unscheduled discovery of this Interflug memorial website has gotten us sidetracked in reviewing its treasures. This post celebrates the first half of a photocopy-palletted schedule from November 1975 to March 1976 for routes within Europe and the Middle East, as well as the single transatlantic route, the historically curious twice-weekly Berlin—Gander—Havana service, which probably didn't ferry the freezing Newfoundlanders to sunny Cuba on the way. 

Other flights follow from previously-posted material of earlier years: one of the Iron Curtain spines in the latticework, the Berlin—Leipzig—Erfurt—Budapest—Tirana operation is shown at top, and below it one-off flights to the free world: Milan, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Vienna. Shown below is the all-important to Moscow and Leningrad. The largest box shows four weekly operations to the Near East: to Cairo, to Beirut, and Damascus—Baghdad. 

The next post shows the remaining pages of the schedule. 

Azerbaijan Airlines Destinations, Spring 2015

The curious case of the Azerbaijan Airlines route map, a semi-interactive presentation on the airline's slick web portal. Yellow-gold pegs portrude out from a slate-clay continent, showing destinations as expected as London, Frankfurt, Moscow, Paris, and Dubai and as interesting as Prague, Riga, Tel-Aviv, Tblisi and Minsk. To the north, a number of secondary Russian cities is served, but there's only a weak network southward: the map is equally intriguing for the cities not shown. Only New York and Beijing, new long-haul additions to the network, are not encompassed in this slice of globe.

Aegean Airlines: The Eastern Network, Summer 2012

Continuing from the previous post, Aegean Airlines' right-hand side from the same map, showing mostly seasonal operations as far distant as St. Petersburg, Tblisi and Kuwait. Its farthest year-round destination seems to be Moscow. Budapest, just at the page's spine, and Istanbul are also connected to Athens, while a mini hub at Larnaca, Cyprus links to Thessaloniki, Athens, and a number the islands, especially the sizable airports at Chania and Heraklion on Crete, with an all-A320 fleet. The only airport in Asia served year-round appears to be Tel Aviv.

Finnair: Worldwide Network, c.2005-08

Finnair's own Baltic blue flavors this smooth polar projection of the airline's routes. The destinations arrayed are quite similar to the last post, although with all three of Finnair's destinations in Japan are shown, and the inclusion of Guangzhou, dating the map to sometime between 2005 and 2008. Miami is the southwestern extent of the network, although it is unlabeled.

Most remarkably similar to the previous post's map is the European segment, which seems to show the same cache of cities: Madrid, Milan, Budapest, Rome, Dublin, and Paris--suggesting some sort of special meaning in terms of intercontinental connections via Vantaa.

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.

Hainan Airlines, Fall 2008

The global reach of Hainan Airlines in late 2008, when it had already arrived in Europe and the United States, but had yet to expand to become China's fourth largest airline and that country's only 5-star Skytrax carrier. In those intervening years, Hainan has expanded to serve more than 500 routes to more than 90 destinations, growing hugely in its own country, and extending to Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia.

Still based in Haikou, Hainan Island, the airline's present intercontinental operations are focused on Beijing, and now boasts flights to 5 cities in Russia, including Moscow; Almaty; Toronto; Luanda via Dubai; Khartoum; Berlin; and Sydney. Before the end of the year plans include new service to Kolkata, Colombo and Zürich, and the return of Cairo.

Air Astana: International Routes, 2011

From the interactive route map at Air Astana's website. The national airline of Kazakhstan is named after the country's new capital, although confusingly the airline's central hub continues to be the older, larger, erstwhile capital, Almaty. Air Astana uses a combination of Airbus A320, B757 and B767 aircraft to link Almaty to London, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, China, Russia, Delhi, Abu Dhabi and several regional and domestic destinations. The city of Astana itself is, according to Wikipedia, linked to Istanbul, Frankfurt, Moscow, Urumqi, Novosibirsk, Abu Dhabi, and Yekaterinburg, and seasonally to Hanover, although this is not shown on the airline's website.

LOT Polish, ca. 1960

At the height of the cold war, LOT IL-62 jets stretched from Baghdad to Benghazi to Brussels, with the flagship route to New York via Shannon, London and Amsterdam. The routes seem even more dense to the west than the east, with a surprising number of North African destinations: Tunis, Algiers, Benghazi, and Cairo.