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.

South African Airways: the Transatlantic routes, 2013

South African Airways maintains four trans-Atlantic routes from Johannesburg to the Americas: two that remain in the Southern Hemisphere: to Buenos Aires and São Paulo, and two that cross the equator to the Northern Hemisphere: non-stop to New York, and to Washington-Dulles via Dakar. 

South African Airways: Long-Haul to Six Continents, 2013

Continuing from the previous post: the long-haul flights of South African Airways, exclusively on A340 and A330 aircraft, and exclusively out of Johannesburg, to all six inhabited continents: New York via Dakar, Washington, in North America; São Paulo and Buenos Aires in South America; London, Frankfurt, and Munich in Europe; Perth in Australia; and Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Beijing in Asia. It is one of the few airlines to serve all six continents, although that may not last as SAA's financial situation continues to deteriorate and long-standing intercontinental partnerships are scrapped.

South African Airways: African International Network, 2013

As detailed in the previous post, the inflight magazine for South African Airways lists the airline's network across Africa, showing flights to Dar Es Salaam, Nairobi, Mauritius, Blantyre, Lilongwe, Entebbe, Maputo, Brazzaville, Pointe-Noire, Bujumbura, Kigali, and Libreville, exclusively with narrow-body A319 and B737-800 aircraft, except for the route to nearby Mauritius which uses the quad-engined wide body A340. Long-haul routes to four other continents, shown on the bottom half of the page, are detailed in the following post.

South African Airways: African International Timetable: 2013

From the mid-2013 in-flight magazine of South African Airways, which offers “Timetable Highlights,” here showing the schedule to international destinations in Africa as well as verbally describing the network to other continents. This page shows flights to Harare, Victoria Falls, Kinshasa, Accra, Abidjan, Luanda, Lagos, Windhoek, Pointe-Noire, and Cotonou. 

The following page is shown on the next post, which details the rest of the African network. 

Air Namibia Network, c.2000

From a brochure of Air Namibia from around the year 2000, showing the domestic, regional, and intercontinental network. From Windhoek, the airline's smaller craft fly to Walvis Bay, Lüderitz, Oranjemund, Ondongwa and Katima Mulilo in the Caprivi Strip. Namibia's neighbors are each connected by service to a single city: Maun in Northern Botswana (but not the capital, Gaborone), Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe (but not Harare) and Luanda in Angola. Air Namibia flew to both Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Long-haul routes, highlighted in bright Namibian blue, link London and Frankfurt on-board the pride-of-fleet Airbus A340 aircraft; both it and its international crew and European technical maintenance are featured prominently in the leaflet.

Zambezi Airlines: Joburg and Back on the Same Day, December 2010

After the liquidation of flag carrier Zambia Airways in 1995, the Republic of Zambia has had several unsuccessful successors. Zambezi Airlines lasted from 2008 until 2011, during which time never extended beyond the regional cone, but did offer this reasonable rate to Johannesburg, presumably from Lusaka, although the taxes are excluded. Still, not bad for a quick holiday shopping trip.

Zambia Airways: Quick Reference Timetable, Winter 1995

 Staying the Eastern and Southern portion of Africa, here is an historic document from nearly twenty years ago, a quick reference timetable for Zambia Airways which expired on 25 March 1995. The cover provides an index to five pages of flight services, divided from and to Lusaka, the little airline's all-important hub. At the top, an international route network shows flights to five southern African capitals: Lilongwe, Gaborone, Johannesburg, Manzini and Harare, as well as a more distant service to Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam. Two longer flag-ship routes, to Bombay and London, were undoubtedly the pride of the company. Other regional and domestic routes to Lubumbashi, Ndola, Chipata, Mansa, Kasama and Mfuwe are listed inside the timetable but not shown on the map.

Kenya Airways: The Eastern and Southern Africa Routes, 2011.

A detail of the previous post showing the Kenya Airways network stretching across eastern and Southern Africa: non-stops to Gaborone and Johannesburg, and a inter-linked network of services to Lusaka, Lilongwe, Harare and Maputo, whereas Nampula in northern Mozambique is served non-stop. There are also direct flights to Lubumbashi and Ndola in the trans-national copperbelt, and flights stretching into the Indian Ocean to Antananarivo, Moroni and Victoria in the Seychelles. Zanzibar is connected to Mombasa, Bujumbura and Kigali are also linked. Flights northwards include Juba and in the Horn of Africa Addis Ababa and Djibouti.

Kenya Airways: the Africa Network, November 2011

From Kenya Airways in-flight magazine, recalling on older Timetablist posts showing earlier maps. KQ's West African network links the Nairobi hub with N'Djamena, onward to Cotonou, a non-stop to Lagos, connections to Freetown, Monrovia and Abidjan via Accra; a non-stop to Ouagadougou, and to Dakar via Bamako.

In Central Africa, Bangui, Yaounde, Douala and Malabo are variously interlinked and there are non-stops to Libreville, Luanda, Brazzaville and Kinshasa. Eastern and Southern African destinations will be discussed in the subsequent post.

Nairobi Departures April 30, 2013 #2

Rouding out the mid-evening schedule at Nairobi from the previous post are flights on a number of smaller, secondary air companies and low-cost carriers: African Express to Galkayo, Precision Air to Dar Es Salaam, Fly540 to Zanzibar and Juba, and Air Arabia to Sharjah. Qatar Airways to Doha and South African Airways to Johannesburg are mixed in as well.

Nairobi Departures, April 30, 2013 #1

 The departures from about 5:30pm on April 30, 2013 at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi, Kenya, showing a pair take-offs for the Gulf, with Emirates to Dubai and Qatar to Doha, followed by a bank of long-hauls to Europe, starting with British Airways to London Heathrow, Swiss to Zurich, Brussels Airlines to Zavantem in Brussels, followed by a South African flight to Johannesburg and a Turkish flight to Istanbul. Both Kenya Airways and SAA have later flights to Jo'berg as well, and there is a second departure to Doha later on. These wide body flights are interspersed with regional services by Kenya, Air Uganda, and others to regional capitals such as Juba, Dar Es Salaam, and Entebbe Airport outside of Kampala.

British Airways: the African Routes, 2013

Taken from British Airways' inflight magazine from mid-2013, showing its destinations in Africa from London-Heathrow, but also its regional flights on subsidiary Comair: Maputo, Port Elizabeth, Harare, Windhoek, Victoria Falls, Livingston, and Durban are not served by BA metal, and not long after this map went to print, Lusaka lost its long-standing flag-carrier service to Britain.

Emirates: Five A380 Superjumbos to London Heathrow Daily, mid-2013

Following on the last post, this screen-shot from the Emirates web-site details the super jumbo air bridge between London Heathrow and Dubai, now one of the largest-capacity routes out of London, second only to New York-JFK in passenger volume. 

Cathay Pacific: Five Flights a Day to London Heathrow, June 2013

As a measure of London's supremacy over the rest of the UK economy, we jump ahead a quarter-century from the last post to see the Cathay Pacific of today, adding a fifth daily non-stop to London Heathrow, while at the same time abandoning Britain's other economic centers such as Manchester and Birmingham. The services are almost entirely with the behemoth B777-300, Cathay having retired the B747-400 from the route in December, and due to phase out the jumbo from its fleet entirely in September of this year.

Cathay Pacific: System Timetable, Winter 1989-90

It's hard to make out all the various cities in Cathay Pacific's network in the immediate years following the return of Hong Kong to China, but it is interesting to note that a non-stop to Manchester was added to the network for this 1989-90 winter, a route which does not exist today. Port Moresby was added to the route to Auckland, and network stretched into the Indian Ocean with a flight to Mauritius.  A single trans-Pacific service links San Francisco, via Vancouver.

CP Air: Worldwide Network, c.1983

The wonderfully random route network of Canadian Pacific Airlines in its classic CP Air age, when it was the airborne division of Canada's premier transport companies but not able to fly it's premier international routes. A unique collection of flights fan out to four other continents, two across the Pacific: Vancouver—Tokyo—Hong Kong and Vancouver—Honolulu—Nadi—Sydney, and one venturing south to the cone of Latin America: Mexico City—Lima—Santiago—Buenos Aires.

From the Alberta prairie, a transpolar route links Edmonton to Amsterdam, linking to a Rome—Athens route. A second trans-Atlantic flight from Montreal lands at Amsterdam, while a third European route also starts in Montreal, but leaps southward to Santa Maria in the Azores, then to Lisbon, Madrid, and connecting again at Rome. Paris and London are absent.

SAHSA Route Network, 1993

A luscious example of SAHSA's advertising artistry was shown in the middle of last year, but the posts moved on before this equally elegant and attractive example could be featured: an almost railroad-like vine of routes creeps out from a central spine, showing a respectable reach for such a small carrier. Tegucigalpa, the presumed hub, is shown off the the side, completely off-center, below it are the cities of the isthmus, ending at Panama. The broader boughs of the trees, spinning off the top of the network like the kicking legs of a triskelion, are the American gateways: Houston, New Orleans, and Miami, with the Caribbean stops just below, surprisingly including Grand Cayman but also the domestic destinations of Roatan, La Ceiba, and San Pedro Sula—these may had international routes as well. Guatemala City and San Salvador branch off to the far right.

A gorgeous mural of the attractions of SAHSA's network lies at the ad's base, from the skyline of Houston, the icons of Disney World and a Gone with the Wind Antebellum scene at left, to the Mayan temples of Mesoamerica at center, to the fun and sun of the warm Caribbean, a merchant ship navigating the Panama Canal at upper right.

Mexicana: The Americas Unified, 1993

Mexicana boasted of its pan-American network in 1993: stretching from Santiago to San Francisco, Caracas to Chicago, Montreal to (not quite) Montevideo. As with Eastern Air Lines, it's interesting that there are no Brazilian routes: Buenos Aires is the farthest down the cone that Mexicana reached. The inclusion of secondary cities such as San Jose, California, San Antonio and Denver is interesting, compared to the absence of larger airports such as Houston, Dallas, and Washington. There are also only three capitals of Central America in the network: Guatemala, Panama, and San Jose de Costa Rica.

Eastern Airlines: the South American Route System, August 1982

A dreamy, pencil-sketch styled route Map from the pre-digital era adorned the back section of Eastern Airlines in-flight magazine in August 1982. This excerpt detailed the airline's famed Latin American Routes, which fanned out from New York and Miami, following a predominant Andean spine, with busy interconnections between bases in Panama City, Bogota, Quito, Guayaquil, and Lima, thinning out toward Santiago and Buenos Aires. Astonishingly, there were apparently no routes to Venezuela, or to the huge cities of Brazil. The route map shows connections through Miami to Washington, Houston and Los Angeles, and a single non-stop from New Orleans to Panama City. 

ASKY Airlines Schedule, April 2013

The complete network schedule for ASKY Airlines from this spring, helpfully published in their in-flight magazine, detailing their weekly timetable for flights between twenty cities in West and Central Africa, from Banjul to Bamako to Brazzaville.

Ethiopian Airlines: the Gateway Route, c.1965

Decades before it spanned to five continents, Ethiopian Airlines was still a leading carrier, yet with a more modest reach. This vintage advert from a mid-century magazine emphasizes Ethiopian's Frankfurt-Athens-Cairo-Asmara-Addis Ababa-Nairobi axis, flown overnight aboard the luxurious DC-6B. The Queen of Sheba's secondary east-west routes to Khartoum, Djibouti and Aden are also shown.

Ethiopian Airlines: The West African destinations, Spring 2013

Nearly twenty Ethiopian flights stretch across the African continent to points in Western and Southern Africa.

Ethiopian Airlines: The East African Destinations, Spring 2013

Of the more than four dozen African cities that Ethiopian serves, it is particularly strong in its home region of East Africa.

Ethiopian Airlines: Long-haul to three continents, Spring 2013

Even before it reached Brazil in July, the global network of Ethiopian Airlines spread long-haul routes from Addis Ababa to three other continents, including three cities on Mainland China (Beijing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou), plus Hong Kong; a new route to Kuala Lumpur via Bangkok, two cities in India (Delhi and Mumbai), and two cities in Italy (Rome and Milan), plus five other European cities: London, Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt, and Stockholm. The route to Rome continues on to Washington Dulles, and there is a new non-stop to Toronto on a 787 Dreamliner.

Ethiopian: Three times weekly from Addis Ababa to Ndola, April 2013

Ethiopian's neck-and-neck race against Kenya Airways to cover all of Africa has spread to a second airport in Zambia: the northern town of Ndola, gateway to Zambia's famed copperbelt region. Ethiopian serves the town non-stop from Addis Ababa's Bole Airport three times per week.

Ethiopian Airlines: Three times per week from Addis Ababa to Blantyre, April 2013

Ethiopian Airlines has been in fierce competition with its east African rival, Kenya Airways, to connect the continent through its hub at Addis Ababa's Bole Airport. Earlier this year, it launched flights to Blantyre, Malawi's commercial capital and second largest city, which is served by only handful of airlines. Malawian aviation has suffered greatly this year due to the indefinite suspension of Air Malawi. 

Ethiopian Airlines Addis Ababa-Lomé-Rio de Janeiro-Sao Paulo, July 2013

While no Brazilian carrier currently serves West Africa, as of July of this year the South American cone and the Western coast of Africa are connected via one of the world's more unusual routes. Ethiopian Airlines connected a fifth continent to its 55-year old network when a brand-new B787 Dreamliner took flight from tiny Lomé, Togo to Rio de Janeiro, with a continuing service to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Lome is also the home base for Ethiopian-affiliated super-regional ASKY Airlines. The Dreamliner apparently also serves the transcontinental Lomé-Addis Ababa section; ET506/507 spans half the globe thrice-weekly.

VARIG: South American Network, 1973

Brazil dominates commercial aviation in South America today, but four decades ago Rio de Janeiro was the primary gateway to the continent's southern cone, with Sao Paulo just another way station on the routes to Asuncion and Santiago, without, apparently so much as a link to Montevideo and Buenos Aires, at least not on VARIG. Manaus is a more important gateway, with connections to Bogota and Mexico City via Panama, as well as an Andean-hopper terminating at Iquitos, Peru. Recife and Salvador, and Belem all have flights into Europe, with the latter also linked to Cayenne and Paramaraibo, as well as Miami.

See the previous post for the global view of the VARIG route map of 1973. 

VARIG: Worldwide Network, 1973

The International route network of VARIG Brazilian Airlines in 1973 is a fascinating glimpse into a bygone world of flag carriers. Far more European cities are linked directly or indirectly with Brazil by its main airline than today, an indecipherable tangle of routes connects even tertiary airports such as Geneva and Copenhagen. The network funnels together at Rio de Janeiro, with Sao Paulo a tiny dot in Rio's shadow; today Sao Paulo is by far the dominant gateway into South America. Also note the southern Atlantic routes, particularly to Lagos and Cape Town. Ironic that four decades later this rising economic giant does boast a global carrier with an equal reach on continental Europe or Africa.

See the following post for a detail on the South American section of VARIG's network. 

TACV Network, c.2011

An original design by Airlineroutemaps.com shows the network of Cape Verdean flag carrier, TACV. Few airlines could boast such an impressive size-to-reach ratio, with the tiny company connecting four continents on both sides of the Atlantic. From Praia, the national capital, flights hop to nearby Dakar and Bissau on the mainland; the largest regional hub and the nearby Lusophone capital.

The motherland is well served also, with three flights to the Iberian peninsula in total: to the two busiest Portuguese airports, Lisbon and Porto, as well as Madrid. Paris, Amsterdam, and Milan are all served from Sal, with Munich connected via a stop in Las Palmas.

In the New World, the giant Portuguese-speaking Brazil is linked from the closest large city, Fortaleza, while larger, closer airports in North America are bypassed in favor of Boston, hub of America's largest Portuguese-speaking immigrant communities; New England boasts the largest Cape Verdean population outside of the islands themselves. TACV uses a B757 on the route.

Munich Departures, August 2013

The last departures before midnight on a Sunday evening at Munich's airport in August of this year reveals many of Bavaria's more exotic visitors: South African Airways to Johannesburg, and Turkish to Izmir, and Emirates to Dubai, with long-haul services by Lufthansa from its second-biggest hub to Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Of shorter duration is an Easyjet hop to London Gatwick. Before midnight there are two flights to Moscow, one on S7 to Domodedovo and one on Aeroflot to Sheremetyevo. There is an El Al flight to Tel Aviv. There are also charter services to Palma de Mallorca and Antalya.

Arrivals at Dresden International, August 2013

The television arrivals screen at Dresden airport in Germany on a Friday in August of 2013, showing many internal flights on Lufthansa from Munich and Frankfurt, and on Air Berlin from Düsseldorf.  Easyjet has a single service on the board from Basel. Air Berlin also flies in from Antalya, Turkey, and Germanwings arrives from Cologne with an earlier service in from Corfu, which is not the sole Greek Isle connection shown on the board, as there is a later charter arrival on Pegasus from Kos.

Turkish Airlines: the German destinations, 2013

In addition to its impressive array of African destinations, Turkish Airlines, now the world's seventh largest carrier, is heavily focussed on services to Germany, principally given the large number of Turkish immigrants, so it offers flights to a dozen German cities, in many cases offering some of the few services outside of the European Union from smaller airports such as Bremen, and tiny Friedrichshafen on the Bodensee. Most flights are to Istanbul Ataturk. Larger urban centers, including Düsseldorf, Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt host multiple, daily operations to a half dozen Turkish cities, including leisure destinations like Antalya as well as secondary urban centers such as Adana and Trabzon.

Turkish Airlines: the African destinations, 2013

It's surprisingly anachronistic to find a printed timetable in 2013, complete with glossy dust-jacket and newspaper-thin black-and-white sheets inside. Yet Turkish Airlines still apparently publishes such a volume, which displays the breadth of what is suddenly the world's sixth largest airline.

To illustrate the density of this nascent megacarrier, the timetable shows several maps of the airline's vast, pentacontinental network. Here is the astonishing variety of the airline's destinations in Africa, where it has eclipsed its many European rivals in terms of number of cities served, and is well ahead of even the Gulf super-carriers in its sub-Saharan system, as it has landed in airports as uncommon as Nouakchott and Niamey, Kilimanjaro and Kinshasa, Mombasa and Mogadishu. The arrival of a Turkish B737-800 in the Somali capital last year made global headlines, and more recently a Turkish firm won the contract to administer the airport. Note the Turkish spelling as Djibouti as Cibuti.

Further expansion is underway, another Turkish B737-800 will land at N'Djamena via Kano before year's end.

South African Airways: the Southern African destinations 2013

Following from the previous post, this promotional brochure shows the ease of connecting to the southern cone of Africa from South African Airways's gateways in Europe: Munich, Frankfurt, and London Heathrow, via Johannesburg. With the map superimposed, these long-haul legs seem mercifully short. Cities in Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique and Malawi are shown, as well as the airline's many domestic destinations. In most cases, especially outside of South Africa, the proposition is to fly from Europe to OR Tambo, passing over a final destination, before tracking back to reach it on a local connection.

South African Airways: the African Network, 2013

Troubled, loss-making state carrier South African Airways, whose past has been covered extensively on Timetablist, continues to dominate its home continent as one of the largest African carriers. As shown in this flyer circulated at Munich airport earlier this year, the airline still has success connecting passengers via its antipodean hub at Johannesburg OR Tambo, which remains Africa's busiest airport.

Beyond the southernmost cone, detailed in the next post, SAA serves sixteen cities in Western, Central and Eastern Africa, from Dakar to Dar Es Salaam, including smaller airports such as Brazzaville, Bujumbura, Cotonou and Pointe-Noire. However, the airline by-passes the Sahel and Sahara on its way to its new remaining European gateways.

KLM: Nairobi to Amsterdam, April 30, 2013

The route of KLM Flight #KL566 from Nairobi to Amsterdam, a B747-400 which flew right through the notch of Sudan and Libya, as shown on the in-flight video screen, arriving the next morning in Europe. The graphics recall a similar trans-Saharan night flight from Accra from six months earlier.

Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta Airport International Departures, 30 April 2013, #2

The second screen of the international departures board for NBO on the night of 30 April shows activity through the night at this 24-hour airport; no restrictions on small-hour activity, perhaps because there is so little.

In the 35 minutes before midnight, Kenya Airways has two long-hauls: to Guangzhou via Bangkok, and London-Heathrow. There is a shorter flight to Bujumbura and Kigali.

SWISS leaves for Zürich, one of the last African services for the airline which formerly served a dozen sub-Saharan cities. After an almost two-and-a-half hour pause, Brussels Airlines leaves for Brussels via Kigali. Turkish Airlines takes a dead-zone departure time to fly to Istanbul, a curious time slot, and just before sunrise, Ethiopian operates the first of several daily flights to Addis Ababa.

By daylight, activity picks up. KQ leaves for Johannesburg, and follows in the next hour with departures to Dar Es Salaam, Juba, Yaounde, and a link to Lilongwe and Lusaka. Air Uganda's first flight to Entebbe leaves at the same time. African Express leaves for Berbera and Mogadishu at 7am.

Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta Airport International Departures, 30 April 2013, #1

The departure board at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at 9PM in the 30th of April of this year, showing a squadron of flights across Africa, as well as long-hauls to Europe and Asia.

Of the 13 flights shown, 8 are within Africa, and 5 of those are on Kenya Airways: to Gaborone, Botswana, Johannesburg, and a flight to both Lusaka and Harare, all in Southern Africa. Kenya always flies to nearby Entebbe, one of three airlines offering flights to Uganda's main airport late in the evening, the other being African Express and Air Uganda. there is also a KQ service to Dar Es Salaam at 10:30, an hour after Precision Air's service to the Tanzanian capital.

Outside of Africa, Kenya Airways has evening flights to Mumbai and Dubai, the latter with onward service to Hong Kong, while Emirates has a non-stop to Dubai ten minutes later. This is followed by the 11:15 flight to London Heathrow on British Airways. The KLM flight to Amsterdam, leaving at 22:25, is the only other European flight.

British Airways: The African Routes, c.2008

British Airways, a conservative carrier steeped in tradition, rarely makes changes, particularly to its unique route map illustration, which looks quite similar to this version from the beginning of the decade. 

The only changes are the loss of direct BA services to Harare, and the absence of the Dakar-Freetown route. The former is still on the map, but only as part of the South African-centered Comair network.

Since this printing, Dar Es Salaam dropped from the schedule just this past March, and only last week BA announced the end of its historic service to Lusaka-- two legacy routes to former colonies that can no longer be commercially justified.

KLM: First Flight from Amsterdam to Lagos with the MD-11, January 1994

An attractive item from nearly 19 years ago, as KLM was just introducing the MD-11 to its fleet. KLM had served Nigeria for many years, initially with a stop in Kano as part of its earliest trans-African route to Johannesburg, and had served Lagos for several decades. The main event is the upgrading of the route to the shiny new tri-jet, which is both sharply illustrated on the envelope and accurately depicted on the cancellation stamp. Today, although KLM's MD-11 has still been seen in West Africa, an A330 generally does the job.

Nigeria Airways: Domestic Network, November 1981

The most obvious difference in juxtaposing the route map of Nigeria Airways in 1981 with Arik Air in 2012 is the centralization around hubs that has taken place in those decades. Here, the state carrier offered a diversity of linkages between major cities, with an array of flights connecting Kano, Jos, Enugu, Benin City and Kaduna. Even Yola and Markurdi have multiple options (although as with all route networks, the frequency of such flights is not clear).

Aside from the intricacy of this web,  the complete absence of Abuja is obvious. Today, this myriad span of domestic flights has been rationalized around a two-hub system split between Lagos and Abuja. Although airlines worldwide have consolidated into hub-and-spoke systems, it is tempting to see this transition as an allegory for the fate of the federal state and Nigerian society in these ensuing years.

As noted previously, Kano's status as a northern hub and intercontinental gateway has been erased. Note that the Ibadan-Benin City-Calabar service was suspended at the time.

See the previous post for Nigeria Airways's international network from 1981.

Nigeria Airways: International Network, November 1981

In looking from Arik Air's route map from October back to Virgin Nigeria's system from 2009, we can stretch back almost thirty-two years to this representation of the Nigeria Airways network of November 1981, as seen in the old trade publication, Flight International.

There are many similarities, particularly the nearly-identical route line hugging the West African coast to Dakar with a mini-hub at Monrovia. Intercontinentally, there are familiar routes to London and New York.

What is more remarkable, however are the many differences: Long-haul flights to Amsterdam, Rome, and Jeddah, all remarkably emanating out of Kano, with an apparent non-stop to London from Port Harcourt. There is also a trans-African route from Lagos to Calabar to Douala, crossing the heart of the continent to Nairobi, and a link to Libreville from Calabar and Port Harcourt as well. Lastly, a northern flight to Niamey originates in Kano and stops in the sultanate of Sokoto before crossing the border.

Many of these routes no longer exist. Part of this is the decline of Kano as an intercontinental airport, a topic recurring in Timetablist back to its most ancient archives, but is most startling in this earlier Nigeria Airways route map of 1973, when the majority of Nigeria Airway's European routes departed from Kano.  Like many deregulated systems, Nigeria's air services have consolidated, dropping secondary destinations and service from non-hub cities.

The next post will detail the domestic network.