For example, out of the airline’s new destination in Jackson, Mississippi, the carrier will fly to Atlanta, Baltimore, and Houston-Hobby, three of the airline’s largest bases. However, the airline has focused on adding new points to its route network under a hub-and-spoke kind of model. Southwest Airlines has been adding new points across the US and connecting them to some of its major bases. All in all, this is 175 passengers who are willing to fly a specific carrier from Baltimore to their final destination. And, 100 passengers want to fly from Baltimore to Los Angeles. Another 25 want to fly from Baltimore to Albuquerque. There could be 50 passengers who want to fly the carrier between Baltimore and Denver every day. Say an airline is looking to serve passengers out of Baltimore, Maryland. In the post-deregulation market in the US, airlines quickly moved to establish their hubs and offer passengers connections, and it left a noticeable imprint on American aviation. There is a very famous saying about Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL): “ whether you go to heaven or hell, you have to connect in Atlanta.” Atlanta is, obviously, Delta’s largest hub and the largest airline hub in the world. Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Simple Flying Why hub-and-spoke models are popular Southwest saw a five-point decline in the number of passengers who flew nonstop in 2020 compared to 2019. Still a pretty impressive number, Southwest cut just under 10% of its nonstop routes. In 2020, the airline served 667 nonstop city pairs. In 2020, that number went down to 72% as the carrier cut some routes and turned to offer more connections in a bid to keep more of its planes full.įrom a route network perspective, Southwest flew 720 nonstop city pairs in 2019. Southwest Airlines also decided to follow a similar playbook.įor example, in 2019, 77% of Southwest’s passengers flew a nonstop itinerary. However, 2020 threw out almost every airline’s playbook as they retrenched to a mostly hub-and-spoke strategy. Southwest Airlines billed itself as a carrier that flies mostly point-to-point service over a hub-and-spoke network in its annual filing.
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Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Simple Flying Southwest’s route network Southwest is a known point-to-point carrier. This led to the airline seeing a slight drop in the percentage of its travelers who flew nonstop in 2020 versus in 2019. As the crisis began, the airline began to retreat to a more traditional hub-and-spoke network.
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The carrier walks a very interesting fine line between being a large airline and a low-cost carrier that caters to mostly point-to-point travelers. Southwest Airlines is a large American low-cost carrier.