Running a "BarBell" Airline
 

Recently there was talk the HP/US Merger and talk of a "BarBell Airline". Basically having one hub at each end of the country. Which got me thinking...

Imagine an airline with Hub to Hub flights every 15 minutes. All spoke flights are to the local hub (i.e. no cross country spoke flights). All standby flying is free - when you get to the hub you take the next flight - no waiting!

Benefits:
Higher flight availability - since all local flights are to the one hub there are more spoke flights
Shorter transit times - less sitting around at the hub

Yes, people might have to double connect i.e. spoke hub hub spoke rather than spoke hub spoke but the idea is to up the frequency so that the waiting time at the hub is cut down.

Ideas? Thoughts?

Sounds good for a hub airline, but to get from say BOS to SMF, would you rather connect once (at ORD/DFW/DEN, etc) or go the barbell way and have to connect once on the east coast and then once on the west coast? Really depends...

It may work in some geographical situation where 1) the two hubs are in very good positions for most of the connections; 2) not much in between those two hubs so that passengers don't need to backtrack. But then those two hubs may not be in good positions for connections WITHIN one area.

For example, if I run "Euroamerica" airlines, and have hubs in LHR and JFK, I think that will work okay for passengers going in between the regions.

But PHL and PHX? That makes no sense for people going from Florida to anywhere in the west coast, or from the Pacific NW to anywhere in the east. Unless they change their hubs to something like Cincinnati and Salt Lake City. :D Oh well, if it's such a great idea, then DL would be the world's largest and richest airline by now...

So, in short, the answer is no.

Why run passengers through two congested hubs when you can usually get them whereever they want to go by running them through only one?

Why go to two hubs? If you are flying east-east you go through east hub. If you are going west - west you go through west hub. If you are going east-west you go to west hub and if you go west-east you go through east hub.

I like the idea.

That's pretty much what DL and UA do already.