Hub structures of major US passenger airlines

Abstract

Since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, the hub-and-spoke network model has been adopted by airlines as the primary strategy for organizing their route structures. The hub location models, however, have not been able to capture completely the realities of the hub network design problem for passenger airline networks. This study examines the hub structures of six major US airlines based on three different measures of the intensity of hubbing at network nodes. Implications of the analysis results for the hub location models are discussed.