The second type is large tourism cities such as Las Vegas and Orlando that do not have sufficient business travelers to serve as hubs. The first type is medium sized cities such as Austin and Baltimore, which are either too small or located in too poor a geographic area to serve as hubs. This business model works in three types of cities. So instead of having to fly to a big airport and changing planes to fly to my destination as I would on a hub and spoke network, on Southwest I can fly direct to 17 different cities. But if I choose Southwest, I can fly to those cities and many others including Baltimore-Washington, Kansas City, Nashville, and Sacramento. For example, if I live in San Diego and choose a legacy airline, I can fly to a few cities–Atlanta on Delta or Denver on United. While legacy airlines offer direct service to only two or three cities from their non-hubs, Southwest offers direct flights from most cities in its network to multiple cities in its networks. More point-to-point flying is a definite advantage for some types of cities. And since the cities are not scheduled as hubs, connecting times can be much longer.) (In reality, focus cities still serve as mini hubs but with 40% connecting traffic instead of 60%. Since Southwest does more point-to point flying, it does not schedule these flight peaks because fewer people need to change planes. Travelers can go directly from a non-hub city such as Kansas City to another non-hub city such as Las Vegas. Southwest uses a focus city network that features smaller hubs with more point-to-point flights. Airlines schedule multiple flights taking off and landing within several hours so travelers can make their connections without long waits. Hub cities have flight peaks typically in the morning and evening with smaller peaks in the afternoon. But travelers in spokes must connect through a hub to reach another spoke. Travelers in hub cities such as Atlanta have direct flights to all other cities in the Southeast and many cities around the country. Atlanta is a fascinating case study because Southwest bought a successful airline-AirTran-dismantled its hub and spoke network and rebuilt its presence in Atlanta’s around a focus city network.įirst a little background: Delta, United and American have hub and spoke networks. Today we are going to look at Southwest’s operations in Atlanta-a major metro area with no secondary airport and a large legacy airline hub. We also discussed how it has started charging fees to increase its revenue. Last week, we detailed how Southwest Airlines is no longer the low-fare leader. Yet a Coach-only, 737-only, operating style may not be successful in the country’s most lucrative airports.
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