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That's not necessarily true. NYC and London serve as huge hubs. 22% of JFK's traffic in 2016 was connecting passengers, aka passengers that did not start nor en

That's not necessarily true. NYC and London serve as huge hubs. 22% of JFK's traffic in 2016 was connecting passengers, aka passengers that did not start nor end their trip in NYC [1]. That's 22% of traffic that you can free up by adding more point-to-point flights and bypassing JFK entirely. ~35% of LHR's traffic was connecting passengers [2]. If you live in a small/midsize city in the eastern US and want to go to Europe, chances are you'll be taking a small 737 flight to JFK before connecting onto your flight to LHR and then connecting on your flight to your final destination. However, the industry is moving towards more direct flights (see: Delta just added a direct flight from Orlando to Amsterdam). These flights will reduce the congestion of JFK and LHR considerably. > Also don’t forget that airspace is also quite congested. Airspace is congested around specific airports, but the same situation applies: there are other airports with almost zero airspace congestion that can easily pick up the slack. If you're talking about jetstreams, we're almost nowhere near saturating the available airspace over the Atlantic. 1: https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR2016.pdf https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR2016.pdf 2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/303920/flight-transfers-passengers-terminating-at-heathrow-airport-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/303920/flight-transfers-...

mpweiher 9y ago
Not sure how you can write “that’s not necessarily true” when your numbers confirm what I wrote: the vast majority of the traffic goes to the “hubs”, the connecting traffic is in the minority. So when total traffic doubles, that’ll be a 160% increase to JFK even if you remove all the “hub” traffic, which is unlikely, and you assume the increase will be evenly distributed, also unlikely. UPDATE: I don't see how the "direct to smaller airports" is anything but a temporary reprieve that will be overwhelmed by the overall trends: concentration of population in ever larger cities and increasing travel.
- txcwpalpha 9y ago
  I'm not sure how you can claim that they confirm what you wrote. There is a stark difference between what you originally wrote and what your second comment claims you wrote. You originally wrote: > New York, London, Tokyo etc. are not random places in the boonies that serve as hubs, they are destinations. This is much different than your second comment stating the "majority" of traffic. Hell, your second comment even contradicts your first comment: in the first, you claim they are not hubs, and in the second, you acknowledge that they are hubs. Empirically, your first statement is not true, and now you're trying to move the goalposts. As my numbers show, over a fifth of passenger traffic (which is a very significant number) to those airports are connecting passengers, and use those airports as a hub. Therefor, your claim that these airports are not hubs is false.

mpweiher 9y ago

Not sure how you can write “that’s not necessarily true” when your numbers confirm what I wrote: the vast majority of the traffic goes to the “hubs”, the connecting traffic is in the minority. So when total traffic doubles, that’ll be a 160% increase to JFK even if you remove all the “hub” traffic, which is unlikely, and you assume the increase will be evenly distributed, also unlikely. UPDATE: I don't see how the "direct to smaller airports" is anything but a temporary reprieve that will be overwhelmed by the overall trends: concentration of population in ever larger cities and increasing travel.

txcwpalpha 9y ago
I'm not sure how you can claim that they confirm what you wrote. There is a stark difference between what you originally wrote and what your second comment claims you wrote. You originally wrote: > New York, London, Tokyo etc. are not random places in the boonies that serve as hubs, they are destinations. This is much different than your second comment stating the "majority" of traffic. Hell, your second comment even contradicts your first comment: in the first, you claim they are not hubs, and in the second, you acknowledge that they are hubs. Empirically, your first statement is not true, and now you're trying to move the goalposts. As my numbers show, over a fifth of passenger traffic (which is a very significant number) to those airports are connecting passengers, and use those airports as a hub. Therefor, your claim that these airports are not hubs is false.