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I find it interesting that people claim that the hub and spoke model is being phased out. It's not...it's being expanded. There are more hubs, and hubs are expa

I find it interesting that people claim that the hub and spoke model is being phased out. It's not...it's being expanded. There are more hubs, and hubs are expanding the reach of their spokes, and that means more cities where you can find direct flights to or from. The expansion of the number of cities in the US that fly direct to London is because the London hubs have expanded its reach to US cities. In the absence of an airline hub there, you would never find a direct flight to London from Seattle or New Orleans. In fact, you can prove this out yourself: find the list of non-seasonal direct international flights available from your local airport. Of those, filter out the flights that are seasonal, or on an airline for which your local airport is a hub. Then filter out all the flights where the destination is a hub for that specific airline. What is left? For me, nothing [0]. The trend in aviation isn't point to point. It is more hubs with longer reaches. The A380 failed because it is an extremely expensive behemoth with a single solitary benefit that could only ever be realized at megahubs that were already maxed out on 747s: it eased slot constraints. Airlines responded to slot constraints like they should have, by spreading out to more hubs with fewer slot constraints...not by buying a steaming pile of extremely expensive garbage. [0] http://www.portseattle.org/Sea-Tac/Flights-Airlines/Route-Maps/Pages/Non-Stop-International.aspx http://www.portseattle.org/Sea-Tac/Flights-Airlines/Route-Ma...

rconti 9y ago
I don't see how you can reach this conclusion. At the very least, it goes against conventional wisdom. And, of course, it depends on where you sit. With my home airport as SFO, I can be happy about the diversity of point-to-point options I have, but you might argue I'm just flying from one hub to another. If it's true that there are more "hubs", that means that there are also more point-to-point flights for more people. And conversely, the more point-to-point flights there are, the more you could argue some of those points are hubs. Ultimately the issue comes down to how airlines see themselves and market their routes. Low-cost carriers like Southwest are invested in point-to-point, but in the international market, nationality regulations mean that flights are necessarily hub-and-spoke, at least in small countries. If I take a nonstop Icelandair flight from the US to Iceland, is that a point-to-point route? Or would you argue it's hub-and-spoke because Icelandair uses KEF as their hub?
- saosebastiao 9y ago
  From the perspective of the passenger, it certainly appears like more point to point routes. But from the perspective of network and fleet planners, the type of people who do things like decide between A380s and 777s, it absolutely is a hub and spoke network and that point isn’t just an inconsequential matter of perspective like it is for passengers.

rconti 9y ago

I don't see how you can reach this conclusion. At the very least, it goes against conventional wisdom. And, of course, it depends on where you sit. With my home airport as SFO, I can be happy about the diversity of point-to-point options I have, but you might argue I'm just flying from one hub to another. If it's true that there are more "hubs", that means that there are also more point-to-point flights for more people. And conversely, the more point-to-point flights there are, the more you could argue some of those points are hubs. Ultimately the issue comes down to how airlines see themselves and market their routes. Low-cost carriers like Southwest are invested in point-to-point, but in the international market, nationality regulations mean that flights are necessarily hub-and-spoke, at least in small countries. If I take a nonstop Icelandair flight from the US to Iceland, is that a point-to-point route? Or would you argue it's hub-and-spoke because Icelandair uses KEF as their hub?

saosebastiao 9y ago
From the perspective of the passenger, it certainly appears like more point to point routes. But from the perspective of network and fleet planners, the type of people who do things like decide between A380s and 777s, it absolutely is a hub and spoke network and that point isn’t just an inconsequential matter of perspective like it is for passengers.