3 ms·

I'll link to a separate comment I made that clarifies the meaning. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098498

I'll link to a separate comment I made that clarifies the meaning. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098498 Airlines need small amounts of maintenance daily, but occasionally intense maintenance on short notice. When you have to use 3rd party maintenance facilities, it is extremely expensive. Most airlines run their own maintenance facilities at hubs because most of their planes pass through hubs, and a huge expense with maintaining a hub is running a maintenance operation. Southwest's strategy maintains focus cities (which I've used interchangably with minihub or pseudo hub), which operates as a hub from the passenger's perspective, but does not include maintenance facilities. This works out well for them because they operate short haul multi-leg flights on routes that ensure they always have a maintenance facility available to them once per day. So a three leg flight will start at a spoke city, have one intermediate stop at an full hub with maintenance operations, and one stop at a minihub or focus city, before ending at a spoke city. By only having maintenance facilities at half their "hubs", they can have many hubs at a fraction of the cost. Once you get out of the regional business, those multi-leg flight paths no longer make as much sense, because spoke->hub->hub->spoke flight times with a return trip will exceed pilot's allowable operating hours, requiring you to pay pilots to live in two locations instead of one. Southwest has ripped up the regional market with this strategy, but it absolutely doesn't work for anything outside of the regional market.

njarboe 9y ago
What fraction of cities in the US that Southwest services would you call a hub or minihub? Or the fraction of flights that go to spokes? By playing around with this map[1] I would say that southwest has 90-95% of flights going hub to (mini)hub. While delta is very different[2]. Looks like the hub model lets an airline service many smaller cities while the Southwest model services only larger cities but makes most of them a (mini)hub. If I live in North Dakota and can afford to fly, I sure would want the hub system to exist, but for a large number of mid sized cities the Southwest model works much better. [1]https://www.southwest.com/flight/routemap_dyn.html https://www.southwest.com/flight/routemap_dyn.html [2]http://dl.fltmaps.com/en http://dl.fltmaps.com/en
- saosebastiao 9y ago
  You can see their full hubs and focus cities on their wikipedia page. And it isn't necessarily due to being large or small. Some of their hubs are in large cities and some are in small cities. My metro area is quite large (Seattle), but it is only a spoke city, not a hub or a minihub. Operating bases (full hub) Atlanta Baltimore Chicago–Midway Dallas–Love Denver Houston–Hobby Las Vegas Oakland Orlando Phoenix–Sky Harbor Focus cities (mini hub) Austin Fort Lauderdale Los Angeles Nashville Sacramento San Diego San José (CA) St. Louis Tampa
  - njarboe 9y ago
    Arguing about the definition of words can be sort of silly but I guess the last thing I'll say here is that, from a travelers perspective, Southwest, with its 19 hubs/minihubs in the US and scheduling philosophy, many cities that are not hubs look like hubs to the traveler. Take ABQ. A non-hub city for Southwest and Delta. In Southwest's system ABQ connects directly with 15 other cities. For Delta only 4(this could be a cherry pick, but it was the first one I looked at). Southwest focuses on the middle class and small business owners (no first class seating, no expensive flights to Aspen, Jackson Hole, or Sun Valley, no meals, everyone can check bags for free without being on a frequent flyer list, no fees for changing flights, etc) while all the others seem to look to make money on the first class seats and fill the rest as an after thought. Being in the first group, I like Southwest's system better and wish another airline could try the same system for competition. Jet Blue seemed to start out that way but I have not flown them in years. A quick check of their site it seems that have baggage fees and change fees and look pretty hub centered.

njarboe 9y ago

What fraction of cities in the US that Southwest services would you call a hub or minihub? Or the fraction of flights that go to spokes? By playing around with this map[1] I would say that southwest has 90-95% of flights going hub to (mini)hub. While delta is very different[2]. Looks like the hub model lets an airline service many smaller cities while the Southwest model services only larger cities but makes most of them a (mini)hub. If I live in North Dakota and can afford to fly, I sure would want the hub system to exist, but for a large number of mid sized cities the Southwest model works much better. [1]https://www.southwest.com/flight/routemap_dyn.html https://www.southwest.com/flight/routemap_dyn.html [2]http://dl.fltmaps.com/en http://dl.fltmaps.com/en

saosebastiao 9y ago
You can see their full hubs and focus cities on their wikipedia page. And it isn't necessarily due to being large or small. Some of their hubs are in large cities and some are in small cities. My metro area is quite large (Seattle), but it is only a spoke city, not a hub or a minihub. Operating bases (full hub) Atlanta Baltimore Chicago–Midway Dallas–Love Denver Houston–Hobby Las Vegas Oakland Orlando Phoenix–Sky Harbor Focus cities (mini hub) Austin Fort Lauderdale Los Angeles Nashville Sacramento San Diego San José (CA) St. Louis Tampa
- njarboe 9y ago
  Arguing about the definition of words can be sort of silly but I guess the last thing I'll say here is that, from a travelers perspective, Southwest, with its 19 hubs/minihubs in the US and scheduling philosophy, many cities that are not hubs look like hubs to the traveler. Take ABQ. A non-hub city for Southwest and Delta. In Southwest's system ABQ connects directly with 15 other cities. For Delta only 4(this could be a cherry pick, but it was the first one I looked at). Southwest focuses on the middle class and small business owners (no first class seating, no expensive flights to Aspen, Jackson Hole, or Sun Valley, no meals, everyone can check bags for free without being on a frequent flyer list, no fees for changing flights, etc) while all the others seem to look to make money on the first class seats and fill the rest as an after thought. Being in the first group, I like Southwest's system better and wish another airline could try the same system for competition. Jet Blue seemed to start out that way but I have not flown them in years. A quick check of their site it seems that have baggage fees and change fees and look pretty hub centered.