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Airports & HubsHub-and-Spoke vs Point-to-Point: Why America's Flights Are Built the Way They Are
It's a frustration most frequent US travelers will recognize. You're looking for a flight from your city to a destination that seems like it should be a straightforward trip. A quick search, but no — there's no direct flight, just itineraries that require connecting through one or two hubs. Every option seems to route through a hub or two, often enough to make you wonder: why is this the case, and can I get from point A to point B more directly?
What this piece covers
The answer lies in the different ways airlines structure their networks. Two basic models shape these systems: hub-and-spoke flies most routes through central hubs, while point-to-point focuses on direct connections and fewer transfers. The dominant model airlines use determines which routes get served nonstop, which see cascading delays, and which carry the most passengers at any given time.
Why So Many Trips Route Through Hubs
Hub-and-spoke is how most of the country's legacy airlines operate. In this model, flights radiate from a central airport (the "hub"), with that airport facilitating connections to many other destinations. This model enables an airline to connect many different city pairs without a direct flight between each pair — all passengers going from smaller cities to somewhere else in the country need to fly to the hub first.
The benefits of this model are many. It builds economies of scale by using concentrated hubs to run high-frequency, efficient connecting flights, allowing carriers to significantly optimize their aircraft and staffing. This is one reason why hubs make so many possible connections: it increases density and reduces costs.
For passengers, its greatest impacts are on trip times. These itineraries — in general — are longer because trip times must accommodate layovers at the central hub airport. Hub-and-spoke structures also introduce connection risks, as delays or cancellations at the hub have a "ripple effect" that can cause a cascade of further delays.[5]
Such networks enlarge airlines' geographic reach and efficiency without needing to invest in nonstop flights for every city-to-city combination. Instead of flying passengers separately between each city pair, the traffic is consolidated and streamlined, routing everyone through the hub.
Point-to-Point: When You Actually Get a Nonstop
Go look at a route map from most global US airlines and you'll see this reliance on major hubs — cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and other major hubs. That's hub-and-spoke. But, you know how Southwest Airlines typically offers nonstop routes not via hubs at all, but directly between cities?
That's point-to-point. Whereas hub-and-spoke concentrates flights on a central airport, point-to-point connects the origin and destination directly, so no transfer is needed. This provides more direct options for travelers and reduces the risk of missing a connection, at least for long-haul travelers. Passengers on point-to-point have one fewer layover and a lower total travel time.[8]11
However, pure point-to-point is rare in the modern United States. Most point-to-point systems in the US are essentially highly-coordinated hub-and-spoke systems, except for carriers like Southwest, which frequently skip connections in favor of more direct options.
Under point-to-point, flights are operated directly between city pairs without using a hub, which minimizes travel times. Point-to-point networks have no central airport that connects many smaller airports to facilitate connections.[2] But when carriers use point-to-point, it usually occurs where the demand is great enough for a nonstop to be profitable. These flights make fewer stops and have less air connection times than hub-and-spoke flights, which saves valuable time and decreases the risk of connection delays affecting subsequent flights in the cascading system.
What Passengers Feel: Time, Risk, and Missing Bags
The most consequential difference passengers see between hub-and-spoke and point-to-point models is in trip times, connection delays, and (in some cases) lost luggage. Under hub-and-spoke, passengers may see longer itineraries and higher odds of missed connections, as the entire network's schedule is vulnerable to delays at the hubs. Connections are thus more likely to be lost, and delays are more likely to cascade through the system.
In contrast, point-to-point airlines like Southwest average shorter trip times and lower odds of transfer risk. As a rule, fewer passengers will come into your flight from another flight. And point-to-point with fewer transfers can reduce opportunities for misplaced luggage.[6][7]11
Whether you prefer the connection risk and higher frequencies of hub-and-spoke routes or the shorter itineraries and lower transfer risks of point-to-point will depend on your specific trip.11 But the tons of flights served point-to-point allow passengers to avoid many of the risks that cause hub-and-spoke systems to fall apart when an airport or route is disrupted. The more concentrated hub-and-spoke systems can be much harder to recover from when something goes wrong.
Fares and Thin Routes: Why Your Small City Connects
Hub-and-spoke isn't just about offering more flights — it also reduces costs and fares on thin routes between smaller markets. By concentrating passengers onto hub-to-spoke routes, airlines can serve city pairs with smaller demand much more efficiently than if each pair required a nonstop. Aggregating passenger flows onto a fewer number of flights reduces the per-seat cost, which can lower fares, especially on less popular routes.[5] Generally, fares may be higher on hub-and-spoke systems because they include the costs of the extra connections, although this is generally considered to be more base fares and amenities. But the newer routes that this system allows can lead to lower fares, as more passengers can travel from any given route.
Why we published this. A way to read a route map and predict how a trip will actually be built.
