A growing number of passengers are bypassing congested hub airports and flying directly, as airlines take advantage of new jets to redraw their networks.
Since the dawn of the jet age, airlines have flown large and fuel-hungry planes on the busiest intercontinental routes. These link big airports, before passengers transfer on to smaller planes to connect across a region.
But advances in aircraft technology have put this “hub and spoke” model under pressure.
Airlines can now use smaller and more efficient single-aisle jets, typically associated with shorter trips, on long journeys, opening up direct routes that would have been uneconomical with larger planes.
Passengers flying on United Airlines across the Atlantic next summer will be able to take direct flights from the US East Coast to destinations including Bilbao in Spain, Palermo in Italy and even Greenland.
“Smaller, fuel-efficient aircraft like the Boeing 737 Max 8 have enabled new nonstop service to burgeoning niche leisure destinations within reach from the US East Coast,” said Patrick Quayle, senior vice-president of global network planning and alliances at United Airlines.
“Our point-to-point portfolio taps into the growing interest in diverse European locales,” he said.
Other senior airline executives said that, while the hub airport was not dead, passengers were keen to bypass big airports, in part because of the disruption which has gripped many congested hubs since the pandemic.
“We do hear that some passengers are avoiding the very big hubs . . . where there have been delays,” said Bogi Nils Bogason, Icelandair’s chief executive.
The changes have led to a shift in how passengers use large airports over the past decade.
Among people flying through 10 of the world’s busiest international airports last year, 55 per cent were flying directly to their destination rather than connecting between flights. This was up from a near 50-50 split in 2015, according to a Financial Times analysis of data from OAG, an aviation analytics company.
The trend is set to be supercharged by the arrival of an extra-long-range member of the Airbus single-aisle A320 family, which offers a leap in performance. The aircraft took its first commercial flight in November.
The A321XLR can carry up to 244 passengers and has a maximum range of 4,700 nautical miles (8,700km) or 11 hours flying time, thanks to the addition of an extra fuel tank in the hold which can carry about 12,900 litres of kerosene. This compares with the older A320, whose maximum range is 3,400 nautical miles.
European low-cost airline Wizz Air plans to use the XLR to link the UK to Saudi Arabia on all-economy flights, while Aer Lingus and Iberia will fly the plane across the Atlantic.
Christian Scherer, head of Airbus’ commercial aircraft division, said the arrival of the XLR is the “first time in a long time that there is a new aeroplane with new capabilities coming to the market”.
“So even though it’s a derivative of the 321, the fact that it opens up a whole new [range] of possibilities in that aeroplane size category, that is a big deal,” he told the Financial Times.
The arrival of the XLR “will create new opportunities”, said Icelandair’s Bogason. “We can fly further into North America on a very fuel-efficient narrow-body aircraft.”
The airline is considering flights to Texas, California and Dubai from its Reykjavik hub when the planes arrive.
“When the cost is lower, it is less risky to start something new,” he said.
Airline and airport executives agree that hub airports will still play an important role in flight networks, as the most efficient way of connecting large volumes of people and putting on high frequencies of flights on popular routes.
“Our hubs will continue to play a vital role in our network,” United’s Quayle said.
London’s Heathrow airport said in December it was expecting its busiest festive period, with a record number of passengers set to pass through during the month.
But even hub airport bosses concede that the ground is shifting.
“You could say the business model has always been under threat,” said Thomas Woldbye, chief executive of Heathrow, one of the world’s busiest hubs.
“Will we see areas which will be less dependent on hubs, not least because of the XLR? Of course we will. But there is an enormous amount of people who want to travel, many come from areas without major airports. So I don’t think the hub is disappearing,” he told an industry conference in November.
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