Sudan Airways: The International Routes, April 1977

Yet another jaw-droppingly rare find from the world-class collection of Flickr user caribb: This unembellished matrix shows Sudan Airways "Blue Nile international Jet services" as of April, 1977.

The Gulf is heavily favored-- it is not common to find artifacts from this era showing routes to the 21st century hubs of today: Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha; however these are paired with the popular destinations of that contemporary vintage: San'a, Jeddah, and Bahrain.

Sudan's Nile-striped B707s connected to Europe, often via Cairo. None of the European services exist today. A single route heads westward to other Saharan cities, neighboring N'Djamena and terminating at Kano. This is apparently still active.

In its own region, Sudan Airways is startlingly spare: Addis Ababa, Entebbe, Dar Es Salaam, Mogadishu, Djibouti, and other, more distant candidates are absent. Perhaps there was a political explanation for this.

In quite an ironic foreshadowing, Juba, the capital of the newly-independent South Sudan, is show, here as part of the international network, connected to both Khartoum and Nairobi. It is only now, some 33 years later, that Khartoum-Juba flights will cross an international border.

Please see the next post for the contemporary domestic route map.
 

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