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| Hub and Spoke Model |
It is common knowledge that full-service carriers, also
called the legacy carriers, operate on the basis of –hub-and-spoke model of
operation whereas the low cost carriers (LCCs) operate on the basis of
point-to-point connectivity.
Airlines have certain airports as their hubs. The hubs serve
the purpose of concentrating the traffic at designated airports and plan for
further routings. So, all routes operated by major legacy carriers are do have
at least one hub, either in the end of routes or in between. This is a
mandatory provision for their routings and all route planning is done keeping
this in mind. However, there could be certain airports which are not declared
as hubs as such but still have substantial operations by the airline. In this
scenario, these cities are designated as the focus cities. The hubs are also
used as international gateways and are key to international flight operations. Since
there is a concentration of traffic on the hubs by the airline, you can expect
these to be crowded and congested.
The necessity of operating through the hubs makes it
important for the airline to have direct flights operating between those
airports either of which is acting as a hub. If the airline is not flying with
either end as a hub, it is a connecting flight in most of the cases and the
connection is the hub. So, this is basic model of operation of the airline.
This can result in airlines taking more time in these flights due to mandatory touch
down at the hub in between.
When the LCCs first came into picture, thanks to Southwest Airlines, the hub-and-spoke model of operations was the first thing to be done
away with. In its place, the point-to-point operating model was adopted. This
cut short the time of travel as there was no hub. Further, this also saved on
the cost of fuel and made it possible to offer savings on this count to
customers are cheap airline tickets. The model required LCCs to add capacities
only after estimating traffic on flight routes. Success of LCCs clearly
demonstrates that the routing model is also contributing to the desired
objective of providing lowest airfares to passengers.
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