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"If Southwest does not operate hubs and spokes, why do most flights from the East Coast to the West Coast include stops at Baltimore, Midway, Denver, or LasVagas?" Because that's how Southwest has shaped their business plan. Shorter segments, high aircraft utilization, better yields. Aircraft routings on flights from Green to Orlando will often take the aircraft from Providence to Orlando to New Orleans to Houston. Or Providence to Orlando to Birmingham to Dallas. These are not hub-to-spoke flights, or vice versa. Transcon flying is the exact same thing. They'd rather route the aircraft Providence to Baltimore to St. Louis to San Diego than Providence to San Diego nonstop. If the market will support Providence to San Diego nonstop, they might approach that opportunity. As a note, before JetBlue came to Boston, Green had higher numbers of O&D passengers going to Los Angeles than Boston did. And although transcon flying is not their MO, they may be heading down that road more often in the future as they take over Air Tran's routes. Keep in mind their Providence - Las Vegas route is the longest in their network. My whole comment was based around your implied definition of "hub" which, from you letter, I took to mean pretty much anywhere an airline has large numbers of operations, particularly when phrased "ridged hub-and-spoke" and applied to Southwest. I won't deny Southwest is moving more towards this type of system, but their operations remain largely point-to-point, especially when compared to the operations at fortress hubs such as Dallas, Atlanta, and Houston.

The US Airways number was not a reflection of their mainline operations. It reflected the minimum entry salary for a new pilot at one of their regional affiliates, such as Air Wisconsin, where US Airways new-hires begin their careers with the company (albeit in 2009 and reported by the Wall Street Journal). This is one state of today's airline industry that directly comes as a result of a decade of cost cutting. On one front, the consumer has partially benefited from this as the national average airfare has decreased almost 16% compared to 1995, when taking inflation into account. However, the same benefits translate into 70+ hour work weeks and low starting salaries for new-hire pilots.

From: What's cost-benefit of longer runway?

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