Is London the most connected city?
 

I have always wondered which city has the most airlines flying to it, I can't think of any international carriers that don't fly to London.

Can anyone think of any airlines that should fly to London but don't??

I'm not sure, but if London is the most connected, Frankfurt is not far behind.

There are regional carriers that fly internationally (where their region is more like a continent or part of a continent) but not to London. For example, Jet Blue, Westjet, Alaska Airlines, and Volaris in North America.

Also, I you thinking of one London airport (e.g. LHR) or all five(?) London airports?

If you Count all five (LHR, LGW, LCY, STN, LTN) airports of London in, you are covered up pretty good!

If "International" means all european airlines, and all overseas airlines that flies longhaul!

LA (a favourite airline of mine) flies to FRA and not to LHR (or any other British airport) so maybe Frankfurt is better connected???

Also it depends how you define "connected". If your yardstick is number of international airlines that service a hub, LHR is hard to beat. But DXB may be better connected in the sense of having more direct flights to more places in the world. For instance, DXB is the only hub that I know of that has non-stop service to all continents (except Antartica of course).

For sheer number and diversity of international flight options, I'd say LHR is the best single airport and if you include all the London area airports then it is even more unassailable.

Too bad someone hasn't started LHR-PER or LHR-SYD yet. Perth would be easy, but not sure LHR-SYD could be done with a full-load. It is awfully close to the max range of the 777-200LR.

There would be four criteria then:

1. Number of airlines.
2. Number of cities that you can directly fly to.
3. Number of flights that are available e.g. if there is one flight to Australia per week, does that count as much as two flights daily?
4. Diversity of places you can fly directly to. Can you fly to all continents directly?

London, Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam and New York will be up there, I'm sure. Not sure about Asia and Middle East.

Till

Do you mean the airline definition of "directly", which merely requires the same flight number across multiple segments where you may have to make a connection between the segments, or the definition of "directly" that is used by most people not familiar with airline terminology?

I mean the definition as in non-stop flight that doesn't use euphemistic airline terminology. I always get upset when it says "direct flight" and there is a fricking stop-over.

Till

In Asia: HKG, BKK, NRT

Almost certain FRA holds the title for best connected airport (defined as the number of cities/towns served) v LHR. I just can't find the article. London was the most connected city though, thanks largely to Ryanair's range of esoteric destinations.

See also: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...ontinents.html

That's very interesting. If you happen to find the article, please post it.

Till

DXB (largely due to EK) is pretty impressive considering the huge variety and allocation of non-stop flights all from a city most people have no reason/desire to go to (compared to other major airports/cities.)