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

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

Old Oct 25, 2012, 11:26 am
  #16  
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I could see why Baku-Aberdeen instantly - it's clearly an oil route, a number of oil companies have large headquarters or regional headquarters in ABZ.

It was the airline doing it which surprised me - Eastern (T3) is a specialist carrier on UK domestic routes, concentrating on routes which are difficult to do by other methods. Flights are most definitely not LCC (at one point we were flying to HKG from MAN and paying less for those tickets than for the LBA-ABZ routing another colleague was doing monthly) but the routes are all regional airports. Apart from Baku, their only other international destination is Stavanger.

When I have time, I want to see what they are flying on the route, as my experience of them is that they like 18-20 seater planes!
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Old Oct 25, 2012, 11:59 am
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I think it's now gone, but for awhile PIA offered service between ORD and BCN.
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Old Oct 25, 2012, 12:07 pm
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Conviasa's flight between Caracas and Damascus (continuing on the Tehran) is a very very thin route, operated by A340. Currently temporarily suspended, for obvious reasons.
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Old Oct 26, 2012, 3:26 am
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Originally Posted by CaptainMiles
Conviasa's flight between Caracas and Damascus (continuing on the Tehran) is a very very thin route, operated by A340. Currently temporarily suspended, for obvious reasons.
I would love to fly a route like this, they could call it the axis of evil express.

Wonder though if most of the traffic if one sided though, despite relationships being good, I just cannot see a lot of Syrians or Iranians visiting Venezuela unless its for urgent business matters.
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Old Oct 26, 2012, 3:32 am
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Originally Posted by Leviticus
I would love to fly a route like this, they could call it the axis of evil express.

Wonder though if most of the traffic if one sided though, despite relationships being good, I just cannot see a lot of Syrians or Iranians visiting Venezuela unless its for urgent business matters.
Venezuela is considered a great vacation destination by many people....
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Old Oct 26, 2012, 9:27 am
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Originally Posted by TRAVELSIG
Venezuela is considered a great vacation destination by many people....
and it is, but helluva haul for syrians or iranians on holiday
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Old Oct 26, 2012, 3:46 pm
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Originally Posted by pseudoswede
Upon further research, both FRA-YXY and FRA-ANC are both operated seasonally (and one-weekly) by DE using a 767.
I think that this route is (or used to be) FRA-YXY-ANC-FRA or FRA-YXY-FAI-FRA.
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Old Oct 27, 2012, 11:00 am
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Caracas-Tehran actually kind of makes sense from an oil production standpoint. To me, it's the Syria in the middle that makes it kind of random.
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Old Oct 27, 2012, 11:24 am
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Originally Posted by BuildingMyBento
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)?
I do remember flying from RIX to TAS and finding out it was just the first leg of a codeshare to BKK.

I've always thought some of Air Canada's US routes were pretty odd. Perhaps not oddest in the world, but BDL-YUL? I flew it during the Brussels sale last year and almost the whole flight were people on that sale. Wonder if anyone actually regularly flies it.

Also, IcelandExpress used to have TATL service KEF-YWG (Winnipeg). I guess there was something of a Scandinavian community in YWG?
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Old Oct 28, 2012, 2:37 am
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Originally Posted by Yaatri
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.

When delta was a hub in Cincinnati there were quite a few corporate hq of companies in Cincinnati. These corporate hq wanted direct international flights.

Paris route was kept because of the corporate nterests in Paris.

A few companies relocated to a different hub city for the direct flights...one being Chiquita.

RDU-London is for the pharma and the research companies and the university ties between the two places.
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Old Oct 28, 2012, 12:37 pm
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Originally Posted by davewill

Also, IcelandExpress used to have TATL service KEF-YWG (Winnipeg). I guess there was something of a Scandinavian community in YWG?
I remember reading that Winnipeg had the largest Icelandic community outside of the country, which for a country of 320K people... here's a link with an even more random reference: http://life.nationalpost.com/2011/05...e-rock-n-roll/
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Old Oct 29, 2012, 10:14 pm
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They should add in FNJ-KWI :-)

But then again most routes Air Koryo would fly come across as odd
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Old Nov 3, 2012, 7:11 am
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One short domestic hop that I've always thought was weird is JAX-TPA. WN operated it for a while, which isn't a total surprise because of their route network being somewhat point to point, but CO operated it too. WN dropped the route but the new UA flies it now....seems to be an odd spoke-to-spoke service, unless there are substantial business ties between the 2 cities that I'm unaware of.
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Old Nov 3, 2012, 10:33 am
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I always thought Paramaribo to Amsterdam was weird. While I realize there are some Dutch connections there, it doesn't seem like it'd be profitable. Though of course I know there has to be a reason the route is run.
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Old Nov 3, 2012, 10:56 am
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Why? Suriname was a Dutch colony until as recent as 1975, and Netherlands still is one of their biggest trade partners
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