Originally Posted by
MrMan
You just described every network carrier. Fly back and forth from hub as opposed to WN point to point
Not quite exactly that way
always for every network carrier.
There seem to be regional jet subsidiaries of these network carriers that don't stick enough to going back and forth. I was have seen the AA "Envoy" (RJ) flights delayed because of weather nowhere near where they would be if they flew back and forth all day.
Plus there are longhaul planes which fly shorthaul routes when they have "dead time" between their longhaul legs.
The flying back-and-forth is thus more true (at other airlines) at some spokes but less true at some other spokes.
And as the big legacy airlines get more hubs due to mega-mergers, it's less clear whether the same plane will spend all day flying to
the same hub, or maybe fly something like HUBx-SPOKE1-HUBy-SPOKE2-HUBz-SPOKE3-HUBz-SPOKE2-HUBy-SPOKE1-HUBx. (That's especially likely if the merger created several hubs in the same part of the country.)