Airline Hub and Route Geography

how Dy it's Kyle talking about the geography of routes of many major North American and worldwide Airlines I'll be looking at their Hub and spoke Network why certain airports are much busier than others but also looking at some of the trends in air travel pre and post pandemic so let's put our trade tables up I think it's time for us to fly I'm going to start off talking about North American Airlines then talk about Airlines in other parts of the world later on throughout the video I'm going to be looking at 2019 and 2022 numbers with 2019 being the last year before the pandemic and 22 being the most recent numbers available so as you can see from just before the pandemic to the most recent numbers the top 10 has been basically the same although Air Canada has not rebounded as much as some of the American Airlines American and Delta are pretty even but clearly one two Southwest and United are relatively even two but clearly three and four and then there's a rather large drop to Alaska JetBlue Spirit Air Canada and Volaris Volaris is a budget airline in Mexico and is actually larger than the national airline Aero Mexico now I'm going to go into greater detail about some of these Airlines starting with American the largest airlines in the U.S its main Hub and corporate headquarters are in Dallas which geographically is just about the best spot you can have your main Hub it's really not that far out of the way for many people to have a cross-country flight with a layover in Dallas its East Coast Hub is Charlotte North Carolina so if you're flying from the Northeast to the southeast or vice versa on American there's a good chance you're going to have a layover in Charlotte and the main gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean is through its hub in Miami so what often happens for people traveling to Latin America or the Caribbean you'll have a layover in Miami and in Miami in the late afternoon and early evening as many flights that go to some of these individual Caribbean islands or some of these Latin American countries and geographically Miami is the perfect hub for jumping off into Latin America in the west Americans Hub is Phoenix Arizona and kind of like Miami for Latin America Phoenix is the perfect location for a hub in the southwest or getting to other parts of the country so between Dallas Miami and Phoenix I believe American Airlines has the best setup of hubs geographically and this might very well play a role as to why American is the largest airline in the U.S now looking at the second busiest airline in the U.S Delta Delta's corporate headquarters and Main Hub are in Atlanta which plays a major role as to why Atlanta is the busiest airport in the world but it's also because Atlanta really only has one major airport most other major measures have multiple airports to kind of ease traffic away from the main one but Atlanta only has one big one it has two Midwestern hubs one in Minneapolis St Paul and one in Detroit The Hub at MSP is used primarily as an entrance point to Canada and also for domestic flights within the Midwest the Hub in Detroit is the main hub for major international flights to Europe and Delta uses Seattle as its main hub for trans-pacific flights to Asia similar to American using Phoenix as its Western Hub Delta uses Salt Lake it serves the same purpose although it might not be as geographically advantageous as Phoenix but of course with Airlines being enormous companies it certainly isn't just geography that's driving whether or not you have a successful Airline but geography does play a very important role third largest of the more traditional type Airlines is United back in the mid-2010 the Southwest actually passed United in terms of overall passenger volume but Southwest operates a completely different type of business model but United is the third of the major type Airlines its corporate headquarters and Main Hub are at Chicago O'Hare and up until the 90s this was the busiest airport in the country until Atlanta surpassed it in the early 2000s and in fact in the most recent airport rankings United's Western Hub in Denver was busier than its main Hub in Chicago so the three main Airlines use Phoenix Salt Lake and Denver for Western hubs which makes perfect sense United uses Houston first jumping off point for Latin America and the Caribbean kind of like American using Miami it uses Newark for its transatlantic flights to Europe and it uses San Francisco for its West Coast hub for trans-pacific flights to Asia but I do think geography has played a role in United going from number one to number three and now four in the U.S and Chicago going from the busiest to now third or fourth busiest airport in the U.S Chicago as a city has had mostly population decline for the past 40 50 years and Illinois has a state that says population decline for the past several years and the greater Midwest region in general has had slower population growth in the Southeast and Southwest so fewer people living in Chicago and Illinois and fewer people flying through Chicago because more and more people live in the southern half of the country it means that United has slipped a little bit in terms of its overall Airline ranking in the U.S for Southwest Airlines it is the third largest in terms of Passenger volume and is the largest budget carrier in the U.S Southwest doesn't have a hub it has more of a point-to-point model and it's been mostly a very profitable airline that hasn't had as many of the financial issues that the big three have had but the way this southwest operates it kind of has to operate within the framework of having more traditional Airlines so with the other airlines using the Hub and spoke model Southwest can kind of fill in the blanks with where some of these hubs and spokes aren't serving as well so it's a business model that works for them but all Airlines can't use the point-to-point method again Southwest has to operate within the framework of larger Airlines using the Hub and spoke method now we're going up to Canada where the largest carrier is Air Canada in 2019 it was the fifth largest airline on the continent in terms of Passenger volume but for 2022 it's dropped to eighth very few Airlines have larger passenger volume in 2022 than 2019 but most have rebounded Northern Air Canada I'm sure a lot with travel restrictions with the us but there's probably some other things going on as well there is a budget airline in Canada called WestJet but they don't publish their numbers like most of the other airlines so it's hard to see just how much they've cut into Air Canada's numbers the situation in Mexico is very interesting and that the national Flagship Airline Aero Mexico is not even the largest one in the country just prior to the pandemic Volaris was just a little bit larger than Aeromexico but now it is much larger and valeris has an interesting model that it flies to cities in the U.S it has a large Mexican population and flies to cities in Mexico that aren't huge tourist destinations Aero Mexico right now is in chapter 11 and Delta is going to buy a big portion of it so not sure how that's going to turn out but only time will tell okay so now let's take a look at the busiest airports in the world pre and post pandemic and you'll see some very interesting changes here pre-pandemic look at how many Asian airports are listed here you have Beijing Shanghai Guangzhou Hong Kong Seoul Singapore Bangkok Kuala Lumpur Chengdu and Jakarta all of those were in a top 25 prior to the pandemic none of which are in the top 25 now Tokyo is the only one of the major Asian airports that's still in the top 25 even though it fell from 5th to 16th but you look at what airports are now in the top 25 that weren't before it's almost entirely American airports but if you look in the current top 10 Istanbul at number seven wasn't even top 25 prior to the pandemic and this is largely because Turkish Airlines has gone big on being kind of the world Hub turkey is right where Europe Asia the Middle East and Africa all come together so it makes perfect sense that Istanbul would be a major world hub they have a huge Fleet of mostly new planes and they fly to many many destinations you can fly directly to Istanbul for many cities including quite a few large cities in the U.S but another airport in Asia that's grown a lot is Delhi India from 17th to ninth post pandemic India is now the world's most populous nation and is becoming wealthier even though it's still a very poor country but more people are traveling to and from there and perhaps the Indian Airlines cashed in on the Chinese Airlines being much more shut down during the pandemic I'm not sure but Indian airlines are growing a lot more where the Chinese airlines are much more stagnant and again none of the Chinese airports were even in the top 25 right now but similar to Turkish Airlines Emirates headquartered in Dubai in the UAE is also a big world Hub they've been doing this longer than Turkish Airlines and they really got a fancy expensive Fleet known for really high-end business and first class but even for us peons Emirates is a pretty good airline to use as a hub to get from Europe to Asia or Australia another airline testing the same model as Ethiopian Airlines in Africa it's located in the same general part of the world where Europe Asia Africa and the Middle East all come together and despite Ethiopia being a very poor country facing many issues they've invested billions of dollars in the airline to where it's a major airline worldwide it's part of the Star Alliance system so it's a major airline despite being a very poor country and now let's look over at some of the major European airlines so if you're in a major airport in the U.S or Canada and you look up at the board for departures to Europe you'll see the typical places you might expect to find British Airways going to London Air France going to Paris KLM to Amsterdam Iberia to Madrid and then Lufthansa to Frankfurt so you might be wondering why Lufthansa goes to Frankfurt and not Berlin even though that's the largest city in the country I'm not 100 certain but it's probably because most of the flights coming into Germany are coming from the west or south and Frankfurt is in the west central part of the country with Berlin being in the East Central part of the country most flights would go over Germany to get to Berlin and maybe go west to get back to other parts of Germany it's also interesting to note that British Airways and Air France each have many connections non-stop to African cities but the ones from British Airways tend to go to former British colonies where English is the main language spoken and Air France tends to fly to the former French colonies where French is the main language spoken Airways you can fly directly to places like Nigeria Ghana and Kenya and on Air France you can fly to places directly like Senegal Ivory Coast and Cameroon but generally speaking you can't fly on British Airways to french-speaking African countries or Air France to English-speaking African countries as easily so neo-colonialism still holding true now let's take a look at the current longest non-stop flights in the world I get a genuine chill of fries looking at some of these flight times so as you can see most of these involve connecting a city in Europe or North America to one in Asia Australia or New Zealand also interesting is Melbourne to Dallas and Sydney to Houston and I'm also fascinated by how Singapore Airlines has separate non-stop flights to both JFK and Newark Bangalore is considered the Silicon Valley area of India so that Bangalore the San Francisco non-stop flight makes sense but this really goes to put into perspective of just how far Australia and New Zealand are for most of the rest of the developed world and it's very important to note especially for these long flights but really for all flies that we follow great circles on a globe not straight lines on a flat map so if you're flying from North America to say Europe or China you're going to fly over some arctic areas even though on a flat map it doesn't look like you would something kind of fun to note as if you were to fly non-stop from Denver to Delhi India there isn't a non-stop flight that does this but if you were you could go either east or west and it'd be the same distance so those are some of the major aspects of Airline routes that I wanted to discuss and even though I hate flying I do think it's amazing how you can get from one end of planet Earth to another in a relatively short period of time through flight so that's really cool but I hope you enjoyed this video if you did please give me a thumbs up to let me know you approve And subscribe to this channel if you're interested in learning more about geography from a nerdy perspective but yeah thanks for watching geography King signing out and about to get on a big old jet airliner but don't take it too far away I'd like to give a special thanks to my Superior patrons for their support especially Benjamin if you're interested in purchasing a pin for the viewer pin map that I update every few months or just to support the channel check out my patreon page Link in the description and as always thank you very much

Channel: Geography King

Views: 184,513

Keywords: geography, geography king, airline, airport, plane

Id: IBrIUdbzUTM

Length: 12min 41sec (761 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 16 2023