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. This is as opposed to the Point to Point model. 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 use focus cities, which function much the same as hubs. Airlines may also use secondary hubs, a non-technical term for large focus cities.
A hub in the middle of a route is more effective than at either end as connecting traffic more easily fills the plane - passengers prefer a one-stop (two-leg) route over a two-stop (three-leg) route.
Read more about Airline Hub: Fortress Hub, Major Passenger Airlines and Their Hubs
Famous quotes containing the words airline and/or hub:
“My job as a reservationist was very routine, computerized ... I had no free will. I was just part of that stupid computer.”
—Beryl Simpson, U.S. employment counselor; former airline reservationist. As quoted in Working, book 2, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)