Flying where you don't want to go: an empirical analysis of hubs in the global airline network

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on the rise of so-called 'network cities' through an empirical analysis of hubs in the global airline network. Standard airline databases do not feature the actual routes flown by passengers, and therefore, a new and previously untapped database is introduced. The employed data are transnational and feature origin/destination statistics with additional information on intermediate stops (if any), which allows a thorough assessment of hub structures in the global airline network. The first part of the empirical analysis presents a threefold hub assessment, i.e. (i) an overview of the major hubs in absolute terms, (ii) a similar overview of hubs in relative terms, and (iii) a measure that focuses on the number of cities that make intense use of a hub. The second part of the empirical analysis focuses on some aspects of the spatiality of hub-and-spoke organisation. This is achieved through an examination of the proportion of 'regional' hub passengers and some notable case studies. Copyright (c) 2007 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.

[1]  G. Nero,et al.  A NOTE ON THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF LARGE HUB-AND-SPOKE NETWORKS , 1999 .

[2]  B. Derudder,et al.  U.S. Cities in the World City Network: Comparing their Positions using Global Origins and Destinations of Airline Passengers , 2007 .

[3]  Edward J. Malecki,et al.  The Economic Geography of the Internet’s Infrastructure* , 2002 .

[4]  Sean P. Gorman,et al.  Where are the Web factories: The urban bias of e-business location , 2002 .

[5]  M. Castells.  Local and Global: Cities in the Network Society , 2002 .

[6]  Matthew Zook,et al.  From Podes to Antipodes: Positionalities and Global Airline Geographies , 2006 .

[7]  Nigel Dennis,et al.  Airline hub operations in Europe , 1994 .

[8]  M. E. O'Kelly,et al.  A clustering approach to the planar hub location problem , 1993, Ann. Oper. Res..

[9]  Morton E. O'Kelly,et al.  Hub‐and‐Spoke Networks in Air Transportation: An Analytical Review , 1999 .

[10]  Yue‐Hong Chou,et al.  The hierarchical-hub model for airline networks , 1990 .

[11]  A. Townsend.  The Internet and the Rise of the New Network Cities, 1969–1999 , 2001 .

[12]  Ramón Grosfoguel.  World cities in a world-system: Global logics in the Caribbean city system: the case of Miami , 1995 .

[13]  Kenneth Button,et al.  High-technology employment and hub airports , 1999 .

[14]  Kenneth Button.  Economic Development and Transport Hubs , 2004 .

[15]  Frank Witlox,et al.  An Appraisal of the Use of Airline Data in Assessing the World City Network: A Research Note on Data , 2005 .

[16]  J. Nijman,et al.  Globalization to a Latin Beat: The Miami Growth Machine , 1997 .

[17]  B. Derudder,et al.  Hierarchical Tendencies and Regional Patterns in the World City Network: A Global Urban Analysis of 234 Cities , 2003 .

[18]  A. Townsend,et al.  Network Cities and the Global Structure of the Internet , 2001 .

[19]  S. Sassen.  The Global City , 1992 .

[20]  Morton E. O'Kelly,et al.  EMBEDDING ECONOMIES OF SCALE CONCEPTS FOR HUB NETWORK DESIGN. , 2001 .

[21]  B. Derudder,et al.  POROUS EUROPE: EUROPEAN CITIES IN GLOBAL URBAN ARENAS , 2004 .

[22]  K. Button.  Debunking some common myths about airport hubs , 2002 .

[23]  Sue Ling Lai,et al.  Impact analysis of September 11 on air travel demand in the USA , 2005 .

[24]  Yehuda Hayuth,et al.  Spatial characteristics of transportation hubs: centrality and intermediacy , 1994 .

[25]  Jan Veldhuis,et al.  The competitive position of airline networks , 1997 .

[26]  Aisling J. Reynolds-Feighan,et al.  The US Airport Hierarchy and Implications for Small Communities , 2000 .

[27]  Frank Witlox,et al.  On the use of inadequate airline data in mappings of a global urban system , 2005 .

[28]  David A. Smith,et al.  World City Networks and Hierarchies, 1977-1997 , 2001 .

[29]  Shih-Lung Shaw,et al.  Hub structures of major US passenger airlines. , 1993 .

[30]  Nigel Dennis.  Developments of hubbing at European airports , 2001 .

[31]  J. Bowen,et al.  Network Change, Deregulation, and Access in the Global Airline Industry* , 2002 .

[32]  Ranald Richardson,et al.  The territoriality of Pan-European telecommunications backbone networks , 2004 .

[33]  Morton E. O'Kelly,et al.  The Location of Interacting Hub Facilities , 1986, Transp. Sci..

[34]  Ed Brown,et al.  Beyond world cities: Central America in a global space of flows , 2002 .