On-Line Airline Timetables

[Squawk 6042]

In the dim and distant past there were hardcopy airline timetables which you could browse at your leisure for destinations and travel dates.

I now find that even the on-line versions of these have disappeared and all that you seem to be offered for an airline ‘timetable’ these days is a menu where you have to enter a specific destination and specific travel dates. This makes general browsing cumbersome to the point of not worth bothering with.

Are there any websites about that allow easy and more general browsing of current airline timetables?

Is it only me!?

Any thoughts or comments appreciated.

[Asturias56]

You can pay a small fortune for a subscription to OAG - https://www.oag.com/

monthly paperbacks plus even more expensive on line guides listed by Departure City

Our company used to have a subscription until a year or so back but then cancelled it - a pity I still feel....................

[PAXboy]

I agree! It varies from one airline to the next and part of it is - that schedules are now changed far more frequently than when I started paxing in 1965! Carriers may alter a schedule and not want to draw attention to it. They may add more rotations or change times of rotations during the season. Not often, but it does happen. I suspect another reason for not giving comprehensive long date ranges in PDF/searchable form is that - by doing so they are telling their competition what they are doing.

If I want to know a specific airline's timetable, I pick a week in the general time span (allowing for high/low season) in which I am interested and then note what it says and, yes, sometimes you have to sample 7 times. I was doing this just last night and found that BA gave a week at a time for the destination, whereas Virgin Atlantic gave only the single date, eventhough they operate the route 7 nights a week. I also found that they (VS) had changed their flight numbers for the destination. This was irritating as they had stayed the same for over 20 years and I knew the numbers for quick searching.

If I want to know overall options between two points, I use one of the (too numerous) search sites and select 'direct flights only' and ignore all the pricing - just the carriers and airports. This will tell you a lot and you can then narrow it down but there is no easy, free, shortcut that I know of.

[DaveReidUK]

SkyTeam NA-Europe timetable Jan-Mar 2019 (276 pages) (https://services.skyteam.com/Timetable/Skyteam_Timetable_NA_EU.pdf)

[Squawk 6042]

Thanks all.

It would seem in general the answer is no, although the Sky Team link is appreciated. Now don't get me started on the multiple flight numbers for what is the same flight.....

I am aware of various historic airline timetable sites, and it seems an oddity of the digital age that airline schedule information from only a few years ago may well be permanently lost whereas the hard copies and their scans from decades ago will persist.

[PAXfips]

Lufthansa is offering this ("again") - the yellow book (blue now :D)
Timetable View by Sky-Chiefs (http://www.oim.de/timetable/lh/index.php?lang=en)

[Squawk 6042]

Ha! As you note, I like the way the website calls it the 'yellow book' when the 'cover' is now blue to reflect the new LH colour scheme.

It would be nice if all airlines could do similar, especially as I am someone with great flexibility on travel dates and destinations. Helps geography quizzes too...

[WHBM]

I find I am reduced to going to FlightRadar24, essentially an enthusiast's website, to find which carriers operate where. But if you are after a flight which doesn't go every day then it becomes just impossible.

It's not as if the airline IT department could not produce a good lookalike pdf timetable automatically from their data. Some did that, but bizarrely threw them away. Even those got ruined by including all sorts of ludicrous connections and equally ludicrous 10 lines of codeshares on the same flight. Yes, I know some flights may change. But most don't. I'll take my chance that when I come to book it, it may differ. As carriers seem quite happy to change thngs after booking but before departure, they can't be too fazed by that.

It's like going to a restaurant where, instead of being able to see a menu, you are asked "How hungry are you, when will you next eat, how much money is in your pocket ... etc", and then THEY tell YOU what you are getting and how much it will cost (we'll ignore for now "Do you want to sit at the same table as the rest of your family", a separate topic).

Basically it came because the schedule detail is just a hack of the booking system, and it has been ignored that anyone will want to see the flight availability before they are ready to book.

[Haven't a clue]

I take a look at the arrivals and departures of the desired destination's airport website. For example I'd like to visit the USAF Museum at Dayton, Ohio. Dayton International Airport website tells me which airlines are operating to and from where, and the arrivals and departures boards also give me an idea of timing. Using that information I then look for the appropriate US entry airport with flights to/from it from the UK which offer potential "connections".

[PAXboy]

When researching a route I go to the Wikipedia page of the required airport - they list all the carriers and destinations served. Then I move to the carrier of choice and look for specifics. Aalthough I use FR24 to monitor flights in the usual way, I never use it for this. I often find obscure local routes this way.

[slf001]

flightmapper [dot] net might be useful. (I'm new so can't post urls).

Can search by airline and city/country.


SLF

[DaveReidUK]

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/270x390/scan_20180201_9__4f24612bcf27ec2c2671d52b3c7be2236c1225dc.jp g

[Cymmon]

Dave Reid, as a youngster I used to go to a local travel agent every month or so, and they would give me their old copies.
great memories sitting there reading about all the different aircraft and routes, multi stops in Australia and America, I think some were up to 9 stops....
Looking at BA TriStars operating to Manila with 2 stops, VC10 from Johannesburg to Hong Kong, some great flights.

[Squawk 6042]

Dave Reid, as a youngster I used to go to a local travel agent every month or so, and they would give me their old copies.
great memories sitting there reading about all the different aircraft and routes, multi stops in Australia and America, I think some were up to 9 stops....
Looking at BA TriStars operating to Manila with 2 stops, VC10 from Johannesburg to Hong Kong, some great flights.


Me too!!!

That's why I was wondering - Where is the digital equivalent?

[DaveReidUK]

That's why I was wondering - Where is the digital equivalent?

You can buy the digital equivalent (but it's far from cheap).

In a previous life I used to buy SSIM data from ABC (later OAG) for analysing potential customers' route networks.

Having said that, I also had a ceiling-high stack of WAGs in my garage. :O

OAG SSIM (https://info.oag.com/hubfs/OAG-WebTheme-2016-Images/Product_Sheets/Schedules/Schedules_SSIM.pdf?hsLang=en-gb)

[PAXboy]

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/2000x1418/cls_38_05_a2e2abbeb365af5a896a5a934fa2b8b990d0df1c.jpg

[rationalfunctions]

This from the mid-1930s.

Fascinating!

The modern equivalent is a little more tricky to read http://www.arcgis.com/apps/OnePane/storytelling_basic/index.html?appid=605204b677894f0da7a1acd83b9ee308&_ga=1.47316964.235754488.1426102017

[S.o.S.]

Interesting PAXboy. Names like 'Doncaster' saved from the flames! Routes had the same flight number out and back. You say 'mid-1930s' but the map clearly states 1938!

[Squawk 6042]

Thanks for all the above.

We seem also to be touching on ‘History and Nostalgia’, but interesting nonetheless.

This all arose because for the last couple of years I have needed to travel several times a year between Manchester and Dar es Salaam (and onward, but that is a whole different story) and will be doing the same this year.

However, I became aware that I had no general feel for the options available that I might have had in the ‘hardcopy’ era and I had to trawl the airline and flight booking websites to get the picture, which took some time.

I have been using KLM or Etihad, and am also aware that the other Mid-east (including Turkish) airlines offer options as well as Swiss (nearly wrote Swissair!). Recently, Ethiopian has started operating ADD-BRU-MAN creating another option, but in the run up to commencement the Ethiopian website proved difficult to navigate.

Anyway, I am on top of this routing for now, but just wondered if anyone else found that the more open ended travel options were difficult to find in the digital era - It would seem so.

I think digital works where flights are point to point and daily – Which the vast majority of long haul seems to be these days. Whereas it is not so easy if the flight only operates on certain days and stops off along the way or a change of aircraft is required, as is usually the case for the less well frequented long haul destinations when you start from Manchester..

I liked WHBM’s restaurant analogy!

PAXboy – Your historic map/timetable post is very interesting – Is this available on the internet or is it a scan of a document you possess?

[WHBM]

For those who have been interested by the CLS (Czechoslovakia) 1938 map-style timetable page, and indeed many other "proper" paper timetables from long past, your source, which a number of us here are actually contributors to, is

Airline Timetable Images - List of Complete Timetables (http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/complete/complete.htm)

Work through to the airline lists, click on the carrier to see all the cover pages, or click on the individual dates to see all the pages, one page at a time. The particular one featured above is

http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/complete/cls38/cls38-05.jpg

The map-style timetables, unique to Central Europe, were generally produced by the pre-war German independent publisher of the "Luftreisekursbuch", who used the basic artwork for various carriers and countries, overprinted by the red detail you can see here. The Lufthansa timetable of the era was the principal foundation for this, several other carriers used it as well. The printing format is hand written (look closely) on copper plates by engravers, and the red overstamp put on top where required.

The operating carriers are not shown but the flight numbers are in blocks for each airline, there was some all-Europe co-ordination for this, and with a bit of knowledge of the pre-war airline scene can be worked out. A number of the routes were pool arrangements between airlines of different countries, with the flights run by different national carriers on different days.

The last carrier to use this style appears to have been Finnair, their 1974 timetable gets the whole world into this format. Once you get the hang of them, quite interesting.

http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/ay/ay74/ay74-4.jpg

[Asturias56]

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/270x390/scan_20180201_9__4f24612bcf27ec2c2671d52b3c7be2236c1225dc.jp g

Now that takes me back

I seem to remember there was a US publisher of a guide as well .... anyway I believe OAG bought out
ABC?

[PAXboy]

Thanks S.o.S. for pointing out my obious mistake! I gained this image when posting in the Aviation History & Nostalgia forum, in reply to a question about a flight my grandfather took in the 1930s. WHBM and others were very helpful.

[S.o.S.]

Squawk 6042. I am happy for some nostalgia in here. Mostly it's 'breaking news' but I think this thread of more than enough interest. The only rule that we do watch out for is not to have the same topic discussed in two (or more) forums at the same time. This particular topic has experienced some 'thread drift' and that is fine.

[PAXboy]

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/620x349/tkt_coupons_20e50dbec394fe33bd79aa690c9fbf3540c8b47a.jpg

In that case - You want nostalgia S.o.S.????

[DaveReidUK]

At BA in the mid-70s I shared an office for a while with a wizened old IT guy who was building a prototype ticket printer, in the days when the norm was for them to be written out longhand.

[PAXboy]

I certainly remember the time when the ATB ticket came out and we thought this a great step forward! By the way, what did ATB stand for?

[Ancient Mariner]

I certainly remember the time when the ATB ticket came out and we thought this a great step forward! By the way, what did ATB stand for?
Automated Ticket and Boarding pass.
Per

[Ancient Observer]

Some friends of ours are on their own boat drifting (they call it sailing) around the Caribbean. We tried to find a Virgin flight to get us to one of the islands.
Virgin make you select a specific date.
Forget it. I do not have enough time left on this planet. Loss of business for Virgin.

[PAXboy]

I'd guess that most / all carriers want specific dates as they price per flight. The same daily flight might have a different seat price (in each price class) for each day of the week.

[Sultan Ismail]

On the enquiry page where you state departure, destination and date of travel there is a box "flexible travel dates", tick that and you will be presented with a 7 day pricing schedule centred on your chosen date.

[PAXboy]

I have seen the 7-day options but they still want you to narrow it down. I find that - on the times when i have to travel on specific dates - it costs a lot and, when I can be flexible, the variation in price is very little. I must be doing something wrong with my life ...

[rationalfunctions]

Matrix ITA (https://matrix.itasoftware.com/) let's you do some powerful searches. Google bought them to run the back-end of Google Flights searches

[WHBM]

Matrix ITA (https://matrix.itasoftware.com/) let's you do some powerful searches. Google bought them to run the back-end of Google Flights searches
Unfortunately, yet again, it's a hack of a booking system, which takes precedence, rather than a timetable. What time is my colleague arriving ? Not shown, because the flight has already left. What options are there for return flights ? Only shown longwindedly as fare combinations of outward flights. Etc.

I really conclude that the current generation of sales and IT personnel cannot read a conventional timetable, and conclude that thus nobody else can either. And they can't bear the thought that anyone looks at the flights they offer without coming away having bought something.

Some years ago Google Flight Search used to be quite good. I think they must have taken it from SSIM data. Nowadays getting you to book through them, showing flights in fare order, and emphasising their favourite carrier to the exclusion of others seems to the fore.

[rationalfunctions]

I understand what you are looking for, but to me it sounds like a niche product rather than something of value to the majority of air travel consumers.

Also, I'm sure 'sales and IT personnel' would counter that an aviation enthusiast / pilot doesn't understand complexities of software development or airline marketing :rolleyes:

[BlankBox]

AC still does 'em

https://services.aircanada.com/portal/rest/timetable/pdf/ac-timetable-en.pdf?locale=en&app_key=AE919FDCC80311DF9BABC975DFD72085


try a giggle for your airline+timetable...maybe you'll luck out...

[roofterrace]

A bit late to the party but I started working as a junior for a travel agency specialising in business travel in the summer of 1980. Although the company had recently invested in Travicom - a 'multi-airline' computer reservation system (where one had to log in to the airline you wanted), ABCs were most definitely the standard/go-to when needing to plan an itinerary of any note. If I recall correct, there were 2 editions bi-monthly (blue as per above - I am not yet allowed to post URLs and red, simply divided alphabetically on departure city). They were the size of doorsteps and being a geography nerd (still am) I had no problem getting used to using them - the amount of information for most flights was fantastic. Obviously, as technology developed, the need to depend on the ABCs diminished, although I recall we always kept a couple of copies on subscription, probably until the late 1980s. Little travel-technology related footnote: the company I worked for was the first to use SABRE in the UK. That changed everything.

[Asturias56]

OAG did a rather nice set of mini guides (eg Europe &Mid East) - I think they're still available - but pricey IIRC

https://www.newconcepts.ca/product.php?productid=36&cat=0&page=1

[Hartington]

With ABC you had two books with all the cities listed in alphabetical order. Under each departure city they then listed destination points; direct flights first then a separate list of connections. OAG published a book for domestic US and a separate book for "everywhere else" and did what I thought of as the opposite of ABC. They had the alphabetical list of cities but they were arrival cities with departure cities listed under each arrival city with directs first then connections.
The disadvantage with each, if you only subscribed to oen, was that to construct you own connections you were hopping about in the books. If you had both you could open ABC at the departure point, OAG at the arrival point and then run through the cities until you found a common point.
IN both cases I believe the connections were sponsored by airlines rather than simply constructed by the publisher.
Both publishers also listed minimum connection times for when you were constructing your own connections.
There were some fares but there were separate books for anything more than a simple round trip published by different organisations. I can picture them in my mind but I can't remember the publishers. They didn't always agree! (Mind you, neither do the computer systems today).
As for ticketing I went from hand writing to the early Travicom system where airlines still provided you with their own tickets so you set the system going, inserted the correct airline ticket into the printer and it (usually) did it's thing. That system had issues with bar codes that the printer didn't always read. Then BA had Travicom install printers where the tickets were on a continuous feed which led to a system where the airline name was left blank and the system printed the airline name and code but you still paid the airlines sperarately then to BSP which is a centralised clearing house - all the money goes to BSP who then dole it out to the carrier named on the ticket (so interline billing still happened). Next we got ATBs, still BSP based and finally e-ticketing. With hand written tickets you occasionally got an article in trade press that some agent had written a hugely complex ticket and there would be a picture of several people very carefully displaying a long daisy chain of tickets. As time went on the ability to squeeze lots of information by writing very small on a paper ticket went away so that we now have a limit of 16 coupons on an e-ticket (or did have when I retired).

[S.o.S.]

Hello roofterrace and welcome to the Cabin. The restriction on newbies for posting links is to prevent Spam from those we do not yet know. If you have an interesting link, send me a PM (Personal Message) and I can post it. It is good to have another who worked in 'the old days' and can put things into the correct timeline.

[roofterrace]

Hello roofterrace and welcome to the Cabin. The restriction on newbies for posting links is to prevent Spam from those we do not yet know. If you have an interesting link, send me a PM (Personal Message) and I can post it. It is good to have another who worked in 'the old days' and can put things into the correct timeline.

Many thanks for the welcome, and hopefully I'll be able to contribute in some small way to the forum. Comment noted re links - the one I used was from a quote of the previous posts and wasn't overly relative to my post.

[Asturias56]

of course there were fewer flights and fewer airlines in the days of pen and paper..............

[DaveReidUK]

The printed OAG books certainly survived well into the 1990s.

In another life I spent many hours poring over them, attempting to reverse-engineer route networks of potential airline clients with varying degrees of success.

[PAXboy]

The way that I now reverse engineer is a route is:

Wikipedia
Select country/city
Select transport / Air
Very lovely people have listed the carriers and destinations.
Find one that will probably match your usual carriers
Check routes from your usual airport/s

[Peter47]

The ABC was invaluable in its day and a good library would subscribe. (I have a shelf full of obsolete editions bought at £1 or £2 per issue.) The problem is that codeshares and flights operating on odd days made it ever more difficult to read and it only went a month or so ahead.

Online timetables timetables can be a pain because you have to input a date. Sometimes you want to know if a flight operates throughout a timetable period and that can be difficult to find. You have to know which airlines operate a route which requires a level of knowledge (and knowing about alliances can help). Not every flight is daily which can cause problems. Some airlines such as QF give the choice of a daily and weekly timetable which is helpful depending on whether you want to fly from SYD - MEL or long haul to a station with an infrequent service. Others might like to.

I did round the world trips in 1990 & 1995. If I was doing the same today I might struggle. I have access to the OAG Cargo Guide which gives widebody passenger flights, websites like FR24 & internet message boards. But where does someone who is not interested in aviation start?

[davidjohnson6]

They start with Google Flights and Wikipedia
I think the big 3 alliances have specialised websites to help plan RTW trips

[Asturias56]

"Online timetables timetables can be a pain because you have to input a date. "

Especially annoying if it's not a daily flight! You have to keep putting in dates until you find one

the best sites will suggest an alternative if the date you have has no flight or its fully booked - but most are rubbish

[PAXboy]

I have certainly noticed - before Covid - that online timetables are very sketchy. They do not want to commit to showing dates too far ahead when they might reduce the service. The electronic era allows them a freedom their forbears could only have dreamed of.

[Peter47]

Update
I have just tried to find some Air New Zealand flights and they have a daily timetable but not a weekly timetable. Yet many of their long haul flights are less than daily. I typed 'Weekly timetable' into the help box & got the reply that they no longer produce a weekly timetable and to use the booking function. The information is there but boy its clunky to use. I had to go through an I'm not a robot test & then click on each day for the times. You can use FR24 to look at current flights but not into the future and schedules will be seasonal. Why do some airlines make everything so difficult!