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Historical Travels: Airline Route Maps

Reconstructing journeys from the past

Airline Travel

Queens - Airports - New York International Airport. NYPL Digital Collections Image ID 730536FPrompted by the first flight in an aircraft by Wilbur Wright, commercial flight boomed in the early 1900s- that success has continued to today. Viewing aircraft maps are exciting, as they can answer a variety of questions, such as:

  • What routes did airlines take to get from one location to the next?
  • How have these routes changed over time?
  • What cities and locations benefited from becoming centers of airline travel? 
  • When were certain airports built?
  • What were previous names, of current airports? Current airlines?
  • How did airlines affect international travel? Local travel?

Airline maps can answer these questions, and many more. 

See below for a list of examples of airline maps that you can start your research with.

Queens - Airports - New York International Airport. NYPL Digital Collections Image ID 730536F

Catalog Tips

When searching the Online Research Catalog for road maps, in the Advanced Search, checkmark "Cartographic" under Format and type the following into the Keyword Field for most results:

You can also search under the name of the airline company, as an Author or Keyword. Examples include:

For holdings of other years and places that are not in the Online Research Catalog, please search in the printed Dictionary Catalog of the Map Division (available online via HathiTrust), in:

Please note that airline routes covered large distances - as such, you are more likely to find these routes depicted on maps covering large geographical areas (i.e. continents, regions, world, etc.).

A Selection of Airline Route Maps and Atlases

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