Re-read my e-mail. I said Southwest does not have hubs in the usual sense of the word. However, after doing some more research, I am changing it to state that Southwest does NOT have.hubs, although it does have cities with a large number of flights with a side-effect of having a large number of connections available. There is a subtle difference. An airline with a true hub system will have peaks and valleys in aircraft arrival/departures. For example, an airline may have many flights arrive,say, between 0930 and 1000 and a large number of departures between 1045 and 1115 then not have another aircraft land for 1 or 2 hours. The process is then repeated again. In a usual hub-and-spoke system, the odds of making a connection outside of the hub city are very small. With WN, you could be making a connection at several different cities. Here's some examples of published connections 9 Sep Las Vegas-Baltimore Southwest: BNA, PHX, SLC American: ORD, DFW, STL Oakalnd-Tampa Southwest: PHX, MCI, MSY, SAT, MDW, LAS American: DFW Seattle-Kansas City Southwest: SMF, LAS, PHX, ABQ American: DFW, ORD, STL Kansas City-Ontario Southwest: LAS, OKC, PHX, SLC American: DFW, STL So my point remains that Southwest's hubs are not hubs in the usual sense. If you notice the flights above, Southwest has connecting flights at a wide variety of airports while American does it only at 3 airports. You will find similar results with the other major airlines. Profile of Southwest Airlines at Yahoo (http://biz.yahoo.com/p/l/luv.html) "Southwest Airlines Co. is a domestic airline that provides primarily short-haul, high-frequency, point-to-point, low-fare service. Southwest focuses principally on point-to-point, rather than hub-and-spoke service..." Wallst.net (http://www.wallst.net/archives_audio.php?sector_id=6) "Southwest focuses principally on point-to-point, rather than hub-and-spoke...) Flug Revue (http://www.flug-revue.rotor.com/FRHeft/FRH9907/FR9907g.htm) "We are just focussing on the local traffic and offer non stop flights to places people wish to go. We are not interested in transit passengers", explains (Peter) McGlade (vice president of scheduling). In contrast to all the other big US airlines Southwest does not use a hub, but several regional centres: Most flights depart from Phoenix, followed by Houston-Hobby, Las Vegas and only then Dallas Love Field. A real hub would contradict Southwest's philosophy: One would have to wait here for connecting flights, which might be late, and time wasting transfers could not be avoided. Despite this about 15 per cent of all passengers put up with a short stop, if they are able to get from coast to coast and back cheaply, maybe from Baltimore to Oakland. This costs $356 with Southwest, others demand $850." How Stuff Works - "How Airlines Work" (http://www.howstuffworks.com/airline3.htm) "Not all airlines use the hub-and-spoke approach. For example, Southwest Airlines is one of the exceptions to the hub-and-spoke network system. It uses the old-fashioned point-to-point system, hauling people short distances with few connecting flights. However, Southwest offers very few non-stop flights on longer routes. At the end of 2000, Southwest served approximately 306 one-way, non-stop city pairs. It's point-to-point system provides a more direct route than a hub-and-spoke airline can offer. " BNA: Nashville PHX: Phoenix OKC: Oklahoma City SLC: Salt Lake City ORD: Chicago O'Hare DFW: Dallas/Fort Worth STL: St Louis MCI: Kansas City MSY: New Orleans SAT: San Antonio MDW: Chicago Midway LAS: Las Vegas ABQ: Albuquerque ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bahadir Acuner" <bahadiracuner@yahoo.com> To: <AIRLINE@LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU> Sent: Friday, August 09, 2002 11:13 Subject: Re: [AIRLINE] American Airlines to try rolling hubs > Well, it's not that simple.. > Southwest's ability to make profit doesn't depend on not having hubs. > Besides , Southwest DOES have hubs. > > American's inability to make money is not because of the hubs either. > If hubs were money losing things then no airline would have hubs. > There are so many airlines with hubs that are profitable. > Look at Airtran; look at JetBlue they both make money and they > both have hubs. (You can call them "focus cities" or "cheddar cheese" > but they are hubs) > > The fact of the matter is, American is losing money because of different > factors. Having hubs is not one of them.. > > So the saying "Hubs, bad, point to point good" is not a valid argument. > > BAHA > Fan of profitable airlines, hubs or not > > -----Original Message----- > From: The Airline List [mailto:AIRLINE@LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU]On Behalf Of > David Ross > Sent: Friday, August 09, 2002 2:12 PM > To: AIRLINE@LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU > Subject: Re: American Airlines to try rolling hubs > > > Let's see: > Southwest - no hubs (in the usual sense of the word) - makes money > Other airlines - hubs (you can't get there without going there) - makes no > money > > Hubs, while increasing the number of points reachable by a single flight, > are also an inefficient use of aircraft. The aircraft spend too much time > on the ground at hubs and not in the air making money > > David