Singapore Airlines Network, 1976

This high disco-era Singapore Airlines route map boldly fits the styles of the times, laid out on a blinding dance floor of jolting ribbons, the jagged bands of red and blue interrupted by thunderbolts of strobe.

Aside from this eye-watering background, the route map cartography itself is rather bland: the jet black masses of four continents are connected with an all-white network. While many lines fan out from Singapore itself, Bahrain is particularly important scissors hub, the airline's sole Gulf destination acting as the only way station to six European hubs: London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Zürich, Athens, and Rome. Oriented eastward, Bahrain hosted Singapore flights from Bombay, Bangkok, and Colombo.

In East Asia itself, it is surprising to note how local the schedules ran: just to get up to Seoul or Tokyo required at least two stops in Hong Kong and Taipei. Already, the airline was well-oriented toward the Kangaroo Routes, with a criss-cross of long flights to Perth, Melbourne, and Sydney—although at the very least this map shows that a London-Sydney itinerary would have to pass through two other airports, at minimum, which doesn't seem so fly.

This item is reposted from Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal)'s photo stream. A special thank you to Doug as always for allowing creative commons licensing of his fantastic collection. 

Singapore Airlines: The Asian connections, 2013

From a global business traveler magazine back cover, Singapore Airlines, Silk Air and Changi Airport partner to boast of the easy connections from Manila to Male, Denspasar to Delhi. While the routes fan upwards toward mainland and offshore China, they do not attempt to show Korea or Japan, but instead link a dozen cities each in India, Indonesia and Southeast Asia, many of which are in fact served by the little sister carrier, SilkAir.

Most notably dating the advert is the list of long-haul routes: San Francisco, Houston, Los Angeles and New York. While all four cities are served from Singapore, none are nonstop nowadays, as the ultra-long haul A340 flights were discontinued at the end of 2013. Today they are paired Houston-Moscow, Los Angeles-Tokyo, New York-Frankfurt, and San Francisco with both Seoul and Hong Kong.

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.

Uzbekistan Airways: The International Network, c.2003-2008

In sharp contrast to the photo-generated graphics of the domestic routes, this iteration of Uzbekistan Airway's international network is a sharp, simple white-on-blue. Found on this antique Central Asian tourism website, it dates most likely to the middle of the last decade.

The broad reach of Uzbekistan Airways features fantastic array of destinations of four continents, most especially the flagship Tashkent-Riga-New York route: this pride-of-the-network HY101 survives to this day. There are a great many Russian destinations, and service to many of the Central Asian capitals: Almaty, Astana, Bishkek, Ashgabad, and Baku. One might put the flight to Urumqi, capital of Chinese Turkestan, in this same category. Seven other European airports are included, including Athens and Istanbul. More randomly are flights to Seoul, Osaka, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. Delhi is only less surprising than Lahore and Amritsar, while Jeddah, Dubai, Sharjah and Tel-Aviv round out the Middle East.

Looking at the roster from Wikipedia, a great many of these more random cities survive within the network today.

Uzbekistan Airways: The Domestic Routes, c.2008

The Domestic Routes of Uzbekistan Airways, which provides an essential transport network in such a vast, inhospitable, and oddly-shaped country, double-landlocked in the center of Asia.

Naturally, the capital serves as the hub, roughly in the middle of the country, positioned between the ancient Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bukhara and Ferghana in the east. Tashkent's importance is shown in large, bold, capital letters, with the Uzbekistan Airways swan logo as its point. Nukus in distant Karakalpakstan is the westernmost destination, where the map over-optimistically represents the decidemated Aral Sea as a serene lake of glistening aqua.

Likewise, the map itself presents a country with less than 10% arable land as a system of lush, green valleys, held aloft in an azure blue sky, floating in the clouds.

This item found via this website.

Swissair: The African Destinations, Winter 1972

Continuing from yesterday's post, it is somewhat astonishing to consider today that at the height of its reach, Swissair served more cities in Africa than any other external continent (17 African destinations compared to 14 across Asia). Particularly dense are the West African capitals, six airports from Dakar to Douala (the only non-capital besides Johannesburg on the map). Past Cameroon, francophone Libreville and Kinshasa are also connected, whereas in East Africa, Anglophone Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam are linked via formerly-British Khartoum.

To match the astonishment of the extent of the Swissair network in the early 1970s is to note that today, the successor Swiss International Air Lines only flies to Johannesburg and Dar Es Salaam.

Special thanks again to Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal) for allowing his collection to be featured here. 

Swissair: The Intercontinental Routes, Winter 1972

The five-continent network of d stretched from Santiago to Singapore, Montreal to Manila. Four cities in North America, four in South America, three in South Asia, and five in East Asia were connected with what here is simply denoted as "Switzerland" sitting at the center of Europe, whether Zürich or Geneva is not specified. The only other European cities marked are Athens and Istanbul. A denser array in the Near East: Ankara, Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, Nicosia, Tehran, and Tel-Aviv.

A special thanks to Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal) for the fair-use rights.

The particularly-strong African network will be featured in the following post. 

Air Berlin: The Long-haul Destinations from Munich, summer 2013

A somewhat clever transit-map styling of an Air Berlin wall advert at the Munich Airport U-bahn station, showing the diverse long-haul destinations, which by and large are leisure markets. Four continents are covered: from Phuket and Bangkok in Thailand, and Male in the Maldives, to Mombasa in Kenya and Windhoek in Namibia (the latter two, sadly, seem to have since been dropped from the network). In the Americas, Miami, New York and Los Angeles are complimented by Caribbean resort towns such as Cancún. On the red horizontal line, further sun-and-beach destinations are separated from the more urban trio of Barcelona, Moscow, and Vienna. Strangely, the device isn't carried all the way through, as there is no interchange station in the center where the two lines intersect.

Kuwait Airways: Three New Destinations, Summer 2013

Kuwait Airways is a bit of a dinosaur in the ecosystem of the Middle East's fast-moving air space, having long-since been eclipsed by the megacarrier trio of Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways, and having receded from its previous extents, which once reached as far as Chicago, Tokyo, and Singapore. In the present era, the slow-moving state carrier boasts when it returns to such nearby nations as Turkey. Here, an advert from mid-2013, showing a rather cautious re-entry into southeastern Europe, with two weekly flights to Vienna and Sarajevo, and a mere 3-weekly flights to Istanbul, now the sixth-busiest airport in Europe.

El Al: 3 times weekly to Boston, June 2015

Banner ads have started appearing for El Al's latest expansion into the United States market: thrice-weekly flights from Tel Aviv to Boston, beginning in June of this year.  El Al apparently served Logan Airport in previous decades, but it's return is part of the remarkable intercontinental expansion from Logan, which has seen the airport go from flights almost exclusively to Europe and Caribbean to non-stops to Tokyo on JAL, Beijing (and also in June Shanghai) on Hainan—these three all with the B787 Dreamliner,—as well as Emirates to Dubai, Turkish to Istanbul, and Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong, which begins in May. Copa Airlines recently started flights to Boston, and Aeromexico resumes non-stop flights to Mexico City starting in May as well.

Evening departures from Bahrain International Airport

Gulf Air continues to dominate the evening flight board out of Bahrain, with flights to Jeddah, Dubai (both DXB and DWC), Kuwait, Riyadh and Muscat. In addition, nearly all the major flag carriers of the Middle East are present: Emirates to Dubai, Etihad to Abu Dhabi, Qatar to Doha, Kuwait Airways to Kuwait, Iran Air to Mashhad, and Saudia to Riyadh, and Royal Jordanian to Amman. Low-cost Air Arabia flies to Sharjah. at 6:40, as does Air India Express to Kochi—the only flight outside the Gulf. 

Afternoon departures from Bahrain International, January 2015

The typical weekend afternoon schedule out of Bahrain's only commercial airport is dominated by flights operated by the state carrier, Gulf Air, and flights to the Middle East. Bahrain's flag carrier departs for Karachi, Delhi, Muscat, Riyadh, Dubai (twice), Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, and Dammam. Mahan Air flies to Mashhad, Saudia to Jeddah, and Egyptair to Cairo. Emirati low-cost carriers flydubai and Rotana jet fly to their respective hubs as well.

The only flight on the top of the board that doesn't fall into either or both categories is Cathay Pacific's non-stop to Hong Kong.

Saudia: The Domestic Network, c.1979

Unclear who was the intended audience of this 1979 print advert for Saudia. Were there really that many potential customers who needed to reach innermost Arabia but seek an alternative to the Saudi state carrier? The airline's golden key promised to unlock such likely remote arid outposts as Abha, Badana, Bisha, Gassim, Gurayet, Hail, Jouf, Najran, Qausimah, Rafha, Sharourah, Turaif and Wedjh (all premiering on Timetablist with this post). No town in Saudi Arabia is more than 70 miles from a modern jet airport, the airline boasts.

Handsome cartography all the same, with the watercolor effect of receding waves (notice the absence of Africa at left) and indicating the mountainous regions of Hejaz, Yemen and Iran.

Saudia: The only non-stop flight between Los Angeles and Saudi Arabia, 2014

Continuing to look at advertisements for new long-haul service out of California, this glossy magazine page celebrates the launch of thrice-weekly Los Angeles-Jeddah-Riyadh service on a brand-new Saudia B777-368ER. Interestingly, Saudia arrived at LAX before its fast-growing Gulf rivals Qatar Airways, and Etihad; since the March launch Etihad has commenced A340 flights to Abu Dhabi, and   Emirates operates the world's longest A380 route to L.A., but still Qatar Airways has yet to land in Hollywood.

JAL: San Francisco-Tokyo Haneda on the Dreamliner: The quickest way to Metropolitan Tokyo, 2014

JAL may have the fastest service on board brand-new planes, opening up frontiers in intercontinental flights from the here-to-fore mostly domestic airport at Haneda to California aboard a brand-new B787 Dreamliner, but it certainly has chosen a World Wide Web 1.0 fashion to publicize its pioneering: this banner advert looks like it was made in about 1998.

United: One-Airline Service from the Pacific Northwest to Tokyo and Hong Kong, c.1985

Back in the mid-1980s, when East Asia was still referred to as "the Orient" and frequent flier programs were still new, it was apparently quite remarkable to be able to fly from a "top 100 U.S. business center" to the exotic Far East—not non-stop or one-stop, but one-airline. Nowadays, of course, airline alliances mean that what color the plane is painted in hardly matters any more, but in those days, printing boarding passes and baggage handling still were worth bragging about it print. Not entirely clear whether Portland, Oregon had trans-Pacific service as well, but clearly Seattle was acting as a gateway. United flew SeaTac-Tokyo until only last year; but today Delta is the main U.S. carrier with intercontinental services.

Sabena: First flight from Conakry to Brussels

Although similar first-day covers announcing mid-century Sabena services to West Africa have been featured from the earliest days of Timetablist, this particular item hasn't been posted before: Sabena's 1959 service from Conakry to Brussels, with a special envelope featuring the famous Hôtel de Ville next to a West African mask, with the Boeing Jet Intercontinental. An alarming Guinean serpent stamp occupies the upper right.

Sabena: First Flight Brussels-Elizabethville, May 1953

An historic gem showing the Brussels-Rome-Athens-Cairo-Entebbe-Stanleyville-Elizabethville route's launch in May 1953, which was noted on Sabena's route map earlier this week without the Ugandan stop. The envelope, stamped at Ciampino Airport in Italy, was only posted as far as Lake Victoria's shores, in British East Africa.

Korongo Weekly Flight Schedule, 2013

Switching back to Korongo, whose weekly timetable from last year shows just how small the fledgling airline's operations truly are: only one, at most two, flights per day, with the most frequent operation being a near-daily Lubumbashi-Kinshasa service, which stops in Mbuji-Mayi on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Sundays. Service to Johannesburg is also thrice weekly.

Congo par Sabena, 1954

A domestic route map of sixty years ago looks much more impressive than the meagre network of Korongo today. Sabena offered services to no less than thirty airports in the vast Belgian colony, with what looks to be busy stations not only at the capital Leopoldville, and the principal regional administrative outposts at Elizabethville and Stanleyville, but throughout the interior of the enormous territory.

There were more than half a dozen routes via various way stations to the metropole in Brussels, including Tripoli, Casablanca, and Rome; all the routes from the capital connected at Kano, which must have been quite an operation in its own right.

In addition, regional African routes spanned the territorial border in all directions: from Leopoldville to Portuguese Luanda and Johannesburg, which also had a link to Elizabethville; from Albertville to Dar Es Salaam, from Libenge to Bangui, in French Equatorial Africa. Not especially the route to Entebbe and Nairobi, especially how Kigali lies within the realm of Belgian Central Africa at this time.