A hub airport is used by one or more airlines to concentrate passenger traffic and flight operations. They serve as transfer points to get passengers to their final destination and work as part of a hub-and-spoke system with every additional connection delivering both inbound and outbound flows. To succeed they require strong connectivity and are normally anchored by the activities of a single airline, normally, but not always one of the world's major air carriers.
Historically, hubs generally benefited from an underlying point-to-point demand, but more recently have evolved to sustainably operate purely on transit flows and in cases more than 90% of the traffic is now actually bypassing the destination altogether.
Our QUESTION OF THE WEEK is... Hubs play an important role in air connectivity, but at which of the world's top 50 airports have the strongest dependence on a single airline's network?
JOIN IN THE FUN: Send your answers to: The Blue Swan Daily Content Team
Our previous question asked… The potential for new visa requirements for business travellers and tourist arrivals remains a threat after Brexit, but which European Union countries rely most on UK visitors?
Visa exemption agreements must remain in a post-Brexit environment if European tourism is to thrive, says data and analytics company, GlobalData. While, it is unlikely that we will see any changes or a tightening of entry requirements for travellers for short-visits, there remains so much uncertainty over Brexit that anything still remains possible.
Tourism flows between the UK and Schengen Area countries are significant, and it is Spain that would have the most to lose if new visa requirements were introduced for travel from the United Kingdom with twice as many arrivals than any other European country.
According to GlobalData, the European countries with the largest arrival flows from the UK are, in descending order: Spain, France, Italy, Republic of Ireland, Portugal, Germany, Greece, Netherlands and Belgium.