Having lots of planes makes more point-to-point service possible, which could be a blessing in disguise. There's no question that long range narrow-body jets (737-700/800s, A319/320s) have been great, and 2,000+ nm range RJs are changing the landscape. But I sense that airlines, and their currently artificially distorted labour costs which provide a per-seat-mile cost on RJs that are unsustainable, are going to swing the pendulum to far the other way. Can someone name an airline that uses a balance of hub-n-spoke, point-to-point and RJ flying and does it successfully & profitably? Lufthansa? Matthew On Friday, September 19, 2003, at 03:04 PM, kurtzke@xxxxxx wrote: > Matthew & list: > You hit the nail on the head, namely the two factors that have to be > played off each other. The answer is not all point to point service or > all hub service, but a mixture. Big city pairs should get lots of point > to point, and so forth down to small to small almost all by hub. Having > a lot of planes makes lots of point to point service possible for large > carriers. But even large carriers need to realize they can't go > everywhere. > > john > > Still a Fan of Non-Stops > > On Friday, September 19, 2003, at 01:57 PM, Matthew Montano wrote: > >>> Why does Airline U insist on having so little point to point >>> service and so much traffic through it's hubs? >> >> The idea was that an airline could do two things with a Hub/n/Spoke >> system, that with the same # of planes one could: >> >> a) Serve more destinations >> b) Serve them more frequently >> >> ... and that by using a hub it would be cheaper than running >> point-to-point and avoid suffering poor aircraft utilization, and >> possibly lots of empty seats. >> >> Of course, it's a traditional marketing and pricing problem that >> people don't value their time very well. Folks will spend 10 minutes >> in line to save 1/4 cents a litre (about 13 cents per average fill-up) >> on gas. Compounded with the fact that flights are listed side by side >> in reservation and web-sites they appear as equivalent commodities. >> >> It's obvious why airlines attempt to fill their seats, because they'll >> go empty anyways. But it begs the question the more specific question, >> how did these 'seats' come about anyways? >> >> And how does Air Tran do it? >> >> Matthew