George Blundell-Pound has produced yet another set of fabulous routes, this
time for Air France.
These schedules for both DC-3’s and DC-4’s date from their timetables on the
19th April 1953. By then Air France had already started to replace DC-3’s
with DC-4’s in Europe, but they were still operating quite a number of
routes, notably those in the French speaking areas overseas such as the
Caribbean, West Africa and Madagascar. The DC-4 itself was also giving way
to the larger and pressurised Lockheed Constellation particularly on the
transatlantic routes to the USA.
I hope you will find that this schedule is representative of Air France’s
varied and truly extensive routes and those of its DC-3/DC4 operations. For
each section of the flight descriptions I have shown the extract of the
relevant part of the timetable and then highlighted which are DC-3 and DC-4
routes. I have omitted those routes operated by other aircraft like the
Constellation, Languedoc and the mighty Deux Ponts. I hope you will enjoy
flying them as much as I did in creating them. I have really enjoyed doing
the research into this great French airline and its long history in
aviation. I welcome any suggestions that you think might improve this
schedule and if you encounter any mistakes or anomalies please let me know
and I’ll correct them as soon as I can.
Often the spark that starts the research into a historic airline schedules
comes from the timetables to be found of the Timetable Images web-site
http://www.timetableimages.com
of Bjorn Larsson and David Zekria, and that was true in this case, so my
thanks to them. Finally within DC-3 Airways, my particular thanks to Norman
Hancock (DCA 134) for his continuing support and Max Johnson (DCA 878) whose
format I have yet again borrowed!
