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.

Etihad Airways: African, European & North American Routes, 2011

Etihad is far behind its rival Emirates, especially in terms of African routes. It had fewer North American destinations (and has no A380s) although it has successfully served Chicago O'Hare non-stop with an A340-500 for more than a year. The airline also links Abu Dhabi with smaller cities like Geneva, Minsk, Kiev, Brussels, and Dublin.

Egyptair: the African Routes, 2011

Egyptair has long had a strong presence in connecting the continent's largest city and its headquarters, Cairo, with the rest of Africa. This includes three cities in Nigeria, as well as the city of Juba, capital of South Sudan, which has just recently voted for independence.

Emirates: the African Routes, 2011

Fast-growing Emirates has 18 destinations on the African continent as of 2011.

Iceland Express: New Routes, 2011

A small, back-of-the-ticket-jacket route map showing fast-growing low-cost Iceland Express's bold expansion plans for the coming year across North America, including especially the rather unusual choice of Winnipeg. Clearly marketing this new service to British customers. Note that Reykjavík is shown as the connection point, when it is technically the international airport at Keflavík where the change of planes takes place.

Air Congo Poster

A promotional poster for Air Congo's intercontinental jet services.

Air Congo: Jet Service a Republique du Rwanda

A vintage poster celebrating Air Congo (a Sabena-backed entity) whose four-engined jets soared southward from Europe to Rwanda.

KLM: Amsterdam-Chicago

The inaugural Chicago-to-Amsterdam flight of KLM, showing the outline of the B747 which is still used on the route today.

SAS: Destinations from Kuala Lumpur, c.1960

Scandinavian Airline System offered Boeing jet services from Bangkok, with Polar Routes from Tokyo to Europe and from Europe to Los Angeles; SAS's worldwide network was reached with 4-times weekly connections from Kuala Lumpur on Thai Airways DC-6B cooperative services, which also linked regional cities from Djakarta to Phnom Penh.

Cathay Pacific Airways: Destinations from Kuala Lumpur, c. 1960

A much smaller carrier half a century ago, the green-stripped constellations of Cathay Pacific Airways spanned from India to Japan. It would be twenty years before the airline would acquire its first 747 and a quarter-century before the airline would cross the Pacific. Jesselton is now known as Kota Kinabalu.

KLM: Destinations from Kuala Lumpur, c. 1960

KLM Royal Dutch Air Lines fleet of shiny DC-8 jetliners whisked travelers from Kuala Lumpur east to Manila, north to Beirut and Athens, west to Houston and Mexico City.

JAL: Destinations from Kuala Lumpur, c. 1960

A listing of Japan Air Lines connections from Kuala Lumpur, c. 1960, with office address and telephone number.

British Airways, Latin America & the Caribbean, 1999

Other than its small colonial outposts, which lie within the Caribbean basin between Belize, the Bahamas and Barbados, the United Kingdom has little historic connection to Middle and South America. However, British Airways flies to several Latin cities for petroleum and financial connections, as this bland, newspaper photo-copy quality destination map from 1999 shows.

Air New Zealand: Pacific System, c. 1972

Air New Zealand was decades away from boasting of a world-leading premium cabin as it is today, but can still pride itself in serving the South Pacific better than nearly any carrier, linking Los Angeles and Honolulu to Fiji and Auckland, and offering a non-stop Tahiti service from LAX, too. Today, Air New Zealand links Los Angeles to London Heathrow as well.

Fly Garuda's New Electra, c.1960

A youthful Garuda boasted that its new Electra craft could propel Singaporeans as far as Manila, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Malayan Airways c.1960

An attractive greyscale announcement of an adolescent Malayan Airways tiger lines, which at the time extended only as far as Hong Kong, direct with its jet-prop Bristol Britannia (and supercool frill typeface). Decades later Malaysia would crest as one the world's largest carriers, with services like KL-Dubai-Newark and KL-Johannesburg-Cape Town-Buenos Aires.

Czechoslovak Airlines: Service from Cairo, c.1958

An advert from a trade publication for the shipping industry of Cairo, sometime in the late 1950s, showing what was surely the pride of the Czechoslovak fleet: a Soviet-era Tu-104 jet, able to whisk Egyptians either north to the capitals of Europe via Prague: London, Paris, Moscow, or on a trans-Asian route: Dhahran—Bombay—Rangoon—Phnom Penh—Djakarta (none of which Czech Airlines serves today).

ASKY Airlines network, October 2010

Fast-growing regional carrier ASKY Airlines is based (somewhat surprisingly) in Lomé, Togo. The subsidiary of also-burgeoning Ethiopian Airlines has already established itself as a major West African airline, with useful connections within and between both Anglophone and Francophone cities.

Air France/KLM: African Network, Winter 2010/11: Codeshare destinations

Selected destinations served by Sky-team partner Kenya Airways in code-share are shown in red. Nairobi has become a significant hub for the alliance.

Air France/KLM: African Network, Winter 2010/11: Gulf of Guinea detail

The Air France-KLM's network in the Gulf of Guinea, serving every capital and major city from Abidjan to Luanda, is impressively dense and frequent.