Wall St. Journal: The World's Oddest Air Routes
 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...%3Dinteractive

Interesting articles on some more obscure airline routes and why they exist.

The map is interesting and it gives you a decent insight, but I would strongly disagree with the WSJ, there is hardly anything odd about the routes. Most of them seem to connect major oil producing cities/countries, and the Stockholm-Erbil route is needed because of the 300,000 plus Iraqis living in Sweden.

Once you dig down, of course all of these routes make sense (why else would an airline fly them?) but on the surface most of them seem quite strange. That's what makes them odd. Interesting read ^

Interesting article and one which is more suitable for the Flyertalk News Forum.
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Obscure2k
TravelBuzz Moderator

I agree that there is nothing odd about these routes, although it might appear so to some people. Funny, just a few days ago, I was looking for a way to get to Erbil. I am not sure if I will have to go there, but I might.

Unless I was completely aloof that day, I thought that at KUL in 2008, there was a flight on Uzbekistan Airlines from there to Christchurch. Anyone have any useful input about this actually unusual route (if it did exist)?

Just got back from a business trip to YXY (Whitehorse, Yukon) and discovered that they have seasonal (summer) service to FRANKFURT! I thought that was pretty odd.

Now that's a weird one, do you know if it's an Air Canada mainline route or some sort of charter for a mining or forestry company out there?

What is so strange sbout Cincinnati-Paris. One someone at the WJU ever at CVG say 8 years ago to see the incredible operation. They had direct service to 5 international destinations and even started a HNL nonstop.
So why is not Pittsburgh-Paris which Delta operates seasonal not on the list since CVG is more of a hub then PIT. How about Raleigh-London, before AA started it's former hub that sure would be condsidered a strange route.

The two cities are of similar size, but I think Pittsburgh is better known outside the U.S. than Cincinnati because of its historical association with steel industry. Pittsburgh has a well know University CMU, better museums ans is more cosmopolitan than Cincinnati, which is more provincial IMHO. None of this has anything to do with location of a hub though. If it were not for the research triangle, Raleigh-London would be odd too. It will never be like NYC-LON or NYC-PAR.

RDU-LHR is heavily subsidized by several pharma companies that have large operations in the RTP and London. Glaxo is one of them.

It's actually seasonal, once-weekly LH service (or is it DE?).

Some friends of Mrs. Swede's parents has a daughter that lives in Whitehorse, and the mother visits her every summer. It's very convenient to have one-stop service!

That's really interesting, I am actually quite surprised that they don't have an ANC flight instead with some regional code sharing. Whitehorse is so odd considering nothing is nearby, and its so far from Germany that I assume a large aircraft has to be used, which in turn just kills the frequency.

Upon further research, both FRA-YXY and FRA-ANC are both operated seasonally (and one-weekly) by DE using a 767.

Yep. London is very close to the pharmaceutical valley to the west and northwest of London and also RTP is big for pharma. Glaxo headquarters are about 7 miles from LHR. There is a direct main road that links GSK with LHR.