Airline hub

Frankfurt International Airport serves as a hub city for Lufthansa and receives flights from Star Alliance carriers

An airline hub is an airport that an airline uses as a transfer point to get passengers to their intended destination. It is part of a hub and spoke model, where travelers moving between airports not served by direct flights change planes en route to their destinations. Many hubs of the airlines are also situated at airports in the cities of the respective head offices.

Some airlines may use only a single hub, while other airlines use multiple hubs. Hubs are used for both passenger flights as well as cargo flights.

Many airlines also utilize focus cities, which function much the same as hubs. Airlines may also use secondary hubs, a non-technical term for large focus cities.

Contents

Fortress hub

A fortress hub is an airport where a single airline's share of flights is at or above the monopoly standard of 70 percent of flights in and out of the hub.[1] For example, in 2005 US Airways occupied 72 (plus 1 shared with Lufthansa) out of 85 total gates and accounted for approximately 90% of passenger traffic at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport.[2][3] Another example is at Detroit (DTW), a Delta Air Lines hub. New entrants, such as Spirit Airlines at Detroit (DTW), AirTran at Atlanta (ATL), and Vanguard at Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), allege to have been the target of exclusionary practices by the dominant carrier. Some observers argue that the existence of such hubs can stifle competition; ProAir's battle with Northwest when it briefly flew out of Detroit City Airport is often cited as an example. Northwest was able to out compete the short-lived discount carrier by matching its fares and offering more frequent flights. Although these competitive measures have nothing to do with hub status per se, they are indicative of the measures a hub airline will take to defend its preferred position at a hub airport.

A map showing the main hubs and focus cities (smaller hubs with fewer services and or limited international services) of the remaining legacy airlines in North America including recent mergers and announced mergers.

A few examples of fortress hubs for major US airlines include but not limited to:

Major passenger airlines and their hubs

Africa

Asia

Europe

North America (including Hawaii)

Air Canada operations at Montreal-Trudeau Airport.

Caribbean

Oceania

South America

See also

References

  1. ↑ Dr. Mark N. Cooper (1999-01-22) (.PDF). Freeing Public Pollicy from the Deregulation Debate: The Airline Industry Comes of Age. Consumer Federation of America. pp. 10–11. http://www.consumerfed.org/pdfs/abaair1.pdf. Retrieved 2007-03-17. 
  2. ↑ Source: City of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County, May 2005; US Airways, June 2005 A fortress hub is difficult for new entrant carriers to penetrate.
  3. ↑ "Appendix A: Statement of Enforcement Policy Regarding Unfair Exclusionary Conduct". pp. 10–11. http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/sr/sr255/apndx.pdf. Retrieved 2007-03-28. 
  4. ↑ Hub Cities: Air Canada.com

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