Thai Airways Route Table: Routes from Phuket and elsewhere, November 2016

As shown in the previous post from yesterday, the remarkable Route Table in the back of Thai Airways's in-flight magazine indexes every route of the airline. After listing all the routes out of Bangkok, the remainder is given over to flights from other airports.

While many are leisure routes direct from Phuket, namely Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and St ockholm, there is a direct trans-border hop from northern Chiang Mai to Kunming in neighboring Yunnan province, and a somewhat anachronistic link between Karachi and Muscat, recalling pan-Asian journeys of an earlier era.Likewise, the Taipei—Seoul route shows the vestiges of the decades when a handful of flag carriers operated across East Asia.

Equally fascinating are a pair of what might be categorized as religious routes: Gaya—Varanasi—Bangkok (these two cities premiering here on The Timetablist). These services clearly reflect the importance of Hindu pilgrimages to Thai's customer base. The closest examples to these types of operations would be Aer Lingus's pilgrimage operations of an earlier era, which are now almost entirely covered by charter operations. 

Thai Airways Route Table: Routes from Bangkok, P-Z, November 2016

Continuing on from the previous series of posts, here is the second page of Thai Airways's Route Table in the back of its in-flight magazine. This post finishes tagging all the destinations from Bangkok, as nearby as Siem Reap (this post marking the premier of this destination on The Timetablist) and Vientiane, to as distant as Zürich, Rome and Stockholm. Note that both Haneda and Narita are present for Tokyo, and Xiamen is one of the mainland Chinese cities which have joined the network. 

Although Thai Airways is diminished from its previous glory days, because of the strength of Thailand as a leisure destination, it remains present in a number of secondary European gateways, as this route table shows. 

Thai Airways Route Table, M-P, November 2016

Continuing on from the last post, tagging Thai Airways's route table from last month in the back of its in-flight magazine with the destinations M-P. 

Thai Airways Route Table, G-M, November 2016

Continuing from the previous post, the full route schedule of Thai Airways is, somewhat remarkably, tables the entire route network of the airline in the back of its in-flight magazine. Here are tagged destinations G through M from Bangkok. Almost all are in Asia, except for London, Melbourne and Moscow. 

Thai Airways Route Table, A-G, November 2016

Echoing a post from earlier this week, Thai Airways has kept up its tradition of matrixing its entire route network in the back pages of its in-flight magazine. Details include the mileage, flight time, time zone, and even the local contact number. Comparing to the 2013 version, the increased number of Chinese cities, such as Changsha and Chongqing, is most obvious. 

The entire table will be covered in the following series of posts. 

Thai Airways: New Direct Route to Tehran, November 2016

Forwarding to today's Thai Airways: last month's edition of the Sawasdee inflight magazine featured this advert, announcing the airline's new flight non-stop to Tehran, four times per week. Somewhat unusually for an airline advertisement—very informative but rather old-school—is the inclusion of the weekly schedule in the bottom-left of the page, which is dominated by the gorgeous rose-tinted photo of the landmark Azadi Tower, the most recognizable symbol of the city. Like the gateway arch itself, the advertisement marks the opening up of Iran to new business, and this is surely only the beginning of new airline service to the country's capital. 

Thai Airways: The eastward route network, 2013

The right-hand side of the route network of Thai Airways International, another page from a 2013 edition of the flag carrier's Sawasdee inflight magazine, continuing from the previous post. Most connections from Bangkok, are unsurprising, with a number of cross-connections at Hong Kong and Seoul, although perhaps more interesting are the routes to Kunming and Chengdu in interior China. The inset shows domestic routes and the now-scrapped service to Los Angeles.

Thai Airways: The International Routes, 2013

Like Garuda (not to mention Malaysia Airlines), Thai Airways International is still a going concern but is significantly smaller than it has been in the past. This table, from the back of Thai Airway's inflight magazine from 2013, illustrates the point. Information listing the airline's international services from Bangkok from R—Z, with Rome no longer a destination. A handful of secondary leisure routes are shown thereafter, such as Copenhagen—Phuket and Stockholm—Phuket, and intra-Asian flights such as Hong Kong—Seoul and Hong Kong—Taipei, as well as the old Seoul—Los Angeles route which was removed from the schedule in 2015 after 35 years of service.

Also interesting here are the number of routes to tertiary Indian cities, specifically Varanasi and Gaya, presumably as pilgrimage sites. 

Royal Brunei Airlines Routes, 2016

The Timetablist has featured Royal Brunei before—compare the above map, currently printed in this month's inflight magazine, with the 2011 version posted previously. This small airline of one of only two sovereign sultanates in all the world. The carrier has traditionally connected the tiny southeast Asian statelet, the only country whose territorial extent exists entirely on the island of Borneo, with the rest of east Asia, and has also long operated a route to London Heathrow via Dubai, which is today operated with the sleek B787. The non-stop flight to Jeddah is a somewhat more recent development. As recently as that last post, multiple cities in Australia were served, now the sole route is Melbourne. The inset shows some codeshare partnerships with Garuda, Thai, MAS and Turkish, although other than Istanbul, RB already flies to each destination shown. 

Thai Smile Advertisement, early 2013

An advertisement for THAI Smile, a low-cost subsidiary of Thai Airways founded in 2012, which flies an all-A320 fleet from Bangkok across Thailand, but stretches as far east as Macau, and offers international flights from Phuket to Mumbai, Ahmedabad, “New Delhi,” and Kuala Lumpur.

Thai Airways International Routes, 2013 (cont.)

A continuation of the previous post, showing Thai Airways international destinations across Asia, Europe, and Australia, from Kathmandu to Kunming and Manila to Melbourne to Milan.

Thai Airways: International Routes table, 2013

Similar to the table provided in South African Airways' inflight magazine, Thai Airways provides a listing of its international destinations from Bangkok, with distances, flight duration, local time at a local reservations phone number.

Thai Airways: the Western Long-Haul routes, 2013

The result of the explosive growth of tourism to Thailand in the last three decades has resulted in Thai Airways serving an unusually large array of European airports for such a distant destination. This luscious, orchid-colored route map, from Thai Airway's in-flight magazine from last year, shows more than half a dozen non-stops to Europe, from common megahubs like London, Paris, and Frankfurt, to secondary cities like Madrid, Zürich, Munich, Moscow and Milan, to cold-weather gateways like Brussels, Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm which have fewer intercontinental services.

Outside of Europe, Thai is one of a handful of Asian carriers to fly to Johannesburg, and on the extreme right-hand side of the page the flights to Dubai and Muscat (the latter via Karachi) are shown.

South African Airways: the Australasian routes, 2013

The East Asian and Australian section of South African Airways' route map, from its inflight magazine in mid-2013, shows as many services of other carriers in the Star Alliance as it does of its own operations, which consist only of flights from Johannesburg to Beijing, Hong Kong, and Perth. Flights to Singapore on Singapore Airlines and Bangkok on Thai Airways from Joberg are shown. A fan of flights from Hong Kong to Seoul on Asiana and several Japanese cities on All Nippon fill up northeastern Asia. The Qantas flight to Sydney is shown, which weaves into a network of Air New Zealand flights to Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch.

Brussels Airport Departure Board # 2

About an hour and half of mid-day flights fill in the bottom of the Zavantem Airport departure boarding. Everything is on schedule except its already known that Ukraine International's flight to Kiev is already running late.

Two of Brussels's handful of East Asian visitors leave in this time period: Hainan Airlines to Beijing and Thai Airways to Bangkok. At quarter past noon, a Tunisair flight to Djerba and Monastir leaves just before Aeroflot's flight to Moscow Sheremetyevo. There is also a 1:30 flight on Syrianair to Damascus via Beirut.

Thai Airways International: Worldwide Network, 1985

Although not the size and reach of the present day, Thai Airways at the end of the 1980s already at the impressive reach, as the sharp angled geometry of this unique route map so dashingly illustrates: from the half-hexagon of the Tokyo-Seattle-Dallas/Fort Worth jaunt, to the fingers spreading across the Middle East, although these hit on contemporary destinations such as Riyadh, Dhahran, and Kuwait instead of the 21st century trifecta of Doha, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

From here, the lines continue west, extending into a knot of European destinations, among them Athens, Rome, and Copenhagen--Thai is still today virtually the only Asian presence at Kastrup. Despite the angularity of the route lines, the relative positions of cities are generally true, with the lone exception of Muscat, shown somewhere north of Baghdad in an offshoot of the link between Karachi and Paris.

Closer to the center of its world, the map's thick marks show multiple links across East and South Asia, with dense operations particularly in Hong Kong, Taipei and Singapore as well as smaller cities from Kathmandu to Osaka, as well as four cities in Australia. Thai Airways lived up to the "International" in its name, years before it reached New York and Los Angeles.

Route map from the abundant archives of flightglobal.com

Thai Airways: The Domestic Network, November 2008

The domestic and regional reach of Thai Airways, as shown in its in-flight guide as of November 2008. Almost all of the routes fan out from Bangkok, although Phuket and Udon Thani are connected to the northern capital of Chiang Mai. The only trans-border destination shown here is Phnom Penh.

Intercontinental Destinations from Munich, Summer 2011: Eastern Hemisphere

A detail of the righthand side of the previous post. Although still primarily a landing point for the Transatlantic bridge into the heart of Europe, technology- and business-dense Munich has a large number of Asian services, especially among Lufthansa and its Star Alliance partners: All Nippon, Air China, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, and South African Airways all join up with United, USAirways and Air Canada at Munich.

Elsewhere, the close links between Russia and Germany are manifested in a handful of ad hoc Siberian cities.