Comment by Retric - Hacker Neue

Retric Feb 14, 2019 parent

The fall off of hub and spoke as dual engine aircraft could legally and safely makes such huge aircraft far less appealing. Clearly the market exists, but aircraft last long enough that Airbus is in many ways competing with it’s self for a sill limited number of viable routes.

Remeber, a hub and spoke trip means 2-3x the landings and relies on extremely congested airports. So, point to point has significantly shifted what gets congested. Things may look different in 25 years, but that’s a long time.

nabla9 Feb 14, 2019

High population density cities in Asia inevitably create the same economic conditions as the hub and spoke model. Busy airports with high volume of traffic and high capacity rate.

All estimates point to the future where there will be multiple mega-airports with more than 100 million passengers in Asia.

Retric OP Feb 14, 2019

Look at how many mid sized aircraft still travel from or to large airports. With a point to point system you can load balance to so flight at major cities use an equally large aircraft which makes a dramatic difference. Eventually, they might need something like an A380, but that’s further into the future than you might think and often balanced by building a few more airports.

Large Aircraft are great economically, as long as they can be kept full. But, this tends to be limited as only a tiny fraction of routes can support such beasts.

nabla9 Feb 14, 2019

When the point in point to point systems are big enough, they are equal to hubs in hubs and spoke system. When there are tens of millions people in one spot and airports construction is limited due to land price, that's a hub.

IATA estimates point to several new 100m airports in 10-15 years.

Retric OP Feb 14, 2019

Tradional Hubs did not send jumbo’s to smaller airports. The average flight into and out of an airport was still relatively small. At the same time, it also artificially increased the numbers of flights which dramatically increased traffic.

Now, sure with continued growth eventually you need larger aircraft. But, while demand might pick up they have plenty of time to design a successor especially as they can simply look at 747-800 sales numbers.

saosebastiao Feb 14, 2019

Hub and spoke models still dominate for all major carriers. True point to point routes, where neither the origin nor destination are hubs, are an extremely tiny minority of all routes flown. Some regional airlines (such as southwest) fly pseudo point to point, but really that is just spoke->hub->minihub->spoke and isn't feasible outside of the short routes that regional airlines make.

What has actually happened is that hubs became more numerous and smaller. A major airline might have 6 hubs instead of 2. And most long distance trips are done with 2 legs instead of 3.

Retric OP Feb 14, 2019

There is a vast difference between 6 mini hubs and 2 major ones, especially when different airlines have different mini hubs. It’s a lowest hanging fruit change especially and airlines are trying to minimize hops which really makes a difference.

Remember, mini hubs are near major destinations so people are very likely to be starting or stopping at one, Combined with different airlines 1 hops vs 2 or 3 is common, but more so 2 hops vs 3 or 4.

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