Tianjin Airlines: Tianjin-Hong Kong, July 2011

Depart Grandly to Hong Kong, a major milestone for the regional Chinese airline Tianjin Airlines, which presumably commenced on 15 July, as stated in a web-ad from its own homepage, wherein it refers to itself by its GS flight code. Another link indicates that this was July 2011.

One of its jetliners soars between the Bank of China and the lesser-known skyscrapers of its namesake and home base, Tianjin. Its unclear what the "Gorgeous Jiulong" refers to; presumably to Kowloon.

Tianjin Airlines: Tianjin-Hohhot-Ulaan Baator, 2012

A web-ad from Tianjin Airlines's own home page, celebrating the airline's Tianjin-Hohhot (here transcribed Huhehot)-Ulaan Baator, linking the airline's namesake and home base on the Yellow Sea with the capitals on Inner and Outer Mongolia. The lovely slogan, Depart Grandly, is emblazoned above two cityscapes, clipped into the shapes of shaking hands.

Tianjin Airlines Destinations, 2012

The destination map from Tianjin Airlines's English-language website, which, like Shandong Airlines's map, is only partially interactive and is not itself Romanized. Visitors can scroll their cursor over the cities' (Chinese) names, which then enlarge, but these cannot then be selected to show routes from that city, as is common on more advanced interactive maps. The message also blots out a central part of the territory, concealing a handful of destinations. Altogether it makes for only a cursory understanding of the airlines's system.

However, its clear that the airline is particularly prominent in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, with the airlines's Wikipedia article stating that both Hohhot and Ürümqi are secondary hubs.

The next post will detail the destinations in the southern portion of the map.

Shandong Airlines: The Northern Destinations, 2012

The top half of Shandong Airlines's semi-interactive online destination map, from its website, which at least has an English-language version, unlike some of its sister carriers. The flight routes, whose addition is awaited at the direction of the yellow message box at center, never materialized on a recent visit. Such information would have been enlightening, as the fast-growing airlines of China do not have up-to-date articles on Wikipedia, although that reporting, from July 2010, also lists international flights to Korea and Japan, which are not shown here.

It can be presumed that the major cities of the Shandong Province, principally its supercity Qingdao and its capital Jinan are primary hubs, but most of the major cities of the northeast: Shenyang, Dalian, Tianjin, as well as Beijing itself and the large cities at its south such as Shijiazhuang, Xi'an and Zhengzhou, are all noted here, as is far-off Urumqi.

The next post will feature the lower half of the same map.

Shenzhen Airlines Destinations, 2012.

Like Chengdu, the southern supercity of Shenzhen has its own namesake airline.

Unlike the posts from earlier this month, the super-dense city labels of Shenzhen Airlines's destination map are Romanized, but feature some interesting spellings, seemingly rendered directly from Chinese: Urumqi is transcribed as Wulumuqi, and Harbin is Haerbin. Like Hainan Airlines, the route network that connects these cities in not featured, so it is difficult to determine just how interconnected these cities are.

The next post will detail some of the southernly services, including an array of international flights to many of the capitals of southeast Asia.

Hainan Airlines: Domestic Destinations, January 2012

The dense domestic destination map for Hainan Airlines, which uniquely color-codes cities by their political status, with blue labels marking a "Municipality & Provincial Capital" and a light-green label designating a "Non-provincial capital" with most cities pinpointed by black dots. However, no less than eight cities--chief among them Beijing, Xi'an, Dalian, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Urumqi, and Haikou--are represented by Hainan's new phoenix-wing emblem, which the key simply notes as a "base of Hainan Airlines." The map lacks route lines which would better explain Hainan's mainland system--but its an attractive illustration, nonetheless, and unquestionably an impressive operation.

Korean Air: Chinese Destinations, 2011

China has been a major growth market for global aviation, and Korean Air has successfully marketed its new hub at Incheon as a convenient connection to the mainland, with hundreds of flights each week to more than a dozen destinations. See other posts from today for domestic and Japanese networks.

Air Asia X: The Long Haul Network, c.2010-12

Interrupting the relentless mining of Flickr user caribb's trove, as a tangent about Southeast Asian leisure services from the recent post on the vintage Qantas route map revealed the above, somewhat mysterious image. Source here.

What is curious about this item is that Air Asia X neither serves these routes at present, nor does trusty Wikipedia confirm this web of destinations as either present or erstwhile, in its index. Its not entirely clear whether these routes has been announced or planned, or if this is just wishful thinking. Milan and Budapest, Paris, and Christchurch have all been announced or active since 2010, but are not shown here.