The Hub and Spoke System

When the airline industry was deregulated in the year 1978, a period of intense competition for passengers began. among other things, airlines were pressured to increase the number of cities they served, without increasing fares. However to add new point to point flights, an airline needed to invest substantial funds to buy new aircraft. To solve this problem, the airlines adopted a route system called "The Hub and Spoke System".

Under this system passengers are transported to an intermediate point, called a "hub" to board planes to their final destinations. To understand the hub and spoke system, imagine a bicycle wheel with numerous spokes leading from the hub or center. The wheel's hub is the major city in where passengers can board flights to various destinations. Each spoke is a route from the hub to one of these different destination points.

The hub and spoke system enables an airline to serve the maximum number of passengers while still maintaining a competitive fare structure. a flight that requires passengers to change planes at the intermediate point between the original boarding point and the final destination, with no stopover allowed is called a "connection". A point to point flight that does not require a change of aircraft is called a "direct flight", regardless of the number of stops.

The airport terminals where passengers board airline flights are leased by the airlines. Thus in most cases all the flights operated by a particular carrier take off and land at the same terminal. If a connection involves different carriers, the passengers must change terminals to board their continuing flights. One important benefit of the hub and spoke system is minimizing the number of inter-terminal connections