I brought up GVA as an example in the context of the discussion of how to operate a single longhaul route from a city that is not an airline's hub/does not have a crew base for that aircraft type, not to say that the GVA market was the same as the NCE market. It's in that context that I said that ZRH-JFK-GVA-JFK-ZRH for the plane and ZRH-JFK-GVA>Deadhead ZRH (Crew 1) and Deadhead ZRH>GVA-JFK-ZRH could be a model for how AF could run a longhaul service from NCE, e.g. CDG-JFK-NCE-JFK-CDG. That was the analogy, which has nothing to do with whether GVA is a hub (it isn't) and the different traffic flows (indeed different for many reasons).

Also LX does not run JFK-GVA because GVA would be a hub or secondary hub, or for pretence which supposedly AF does not have. The reason LX runs JFK-GVA is because (i) it has a contract with the UN to transport people between the two headquarters (ii) contracts with medtech firms (iii) at certain times of year there are tourists flying into Geneva to access the Swiss or French Alps. Without the (i) and (ii) contracts, I wonder whether LX would operate that flight. They have ended all longhaul flying from GVA a long time ago and said explicitly that all longhauls would operate from ZRH - with that one exception of JFK, for the above.-mentioned reasons.

And GVA is not an LX hub. They have a number of flights from there, many of them leisure routes. GVA does not operate in the way a hub typically operates, with arrival and departure waves that are coordinated so as to make connections possible. LX invested into the GVA base to stop the erosion of market share against easyjet in Geneva. There is a crew base in GVA. But none of the crews staffs any of the JFK flights, because it's a different staffing pool (French and English sufficient as languages, which is not the case for longhaul flights; cockpit and cabin staff only for the C-Series planes). GVA can be considered a focus city for LX. All of that is different from NCE. But hub or focus city has nothing to do with whether or not planes can operate a W pattern and crews can deadhead to their base. And whilst GVA may handle a third of Switzerland's air traffic, it doesn't handle a third of LX' traffic. That is still heavily ZRH-focused.