Hubs or point to point? - the jury is still out

The existing world economic climate has diverted the air transport industry attention from the long term future strategic plan to one of short term survival.

The 2 major air transport manufacturers historically have offered similar size, similar mission profile aircraft, competing head to head for aircraft sales. It is interesting that the 2 major players have drawn different conclusions regarding the fundamental issue of future long haul airline operations.

In Toulouse Airbus have developed a range of competitive units serving hub and regional needs. But the A380 is truly a long haul hub machine uniquely able to satisfy needs for large volume lower frequency carriage between major points. The Airbus 380 is very much being supported by a limited number of very high volume hub to hub long haul routes .

Boeing meanwhile has created in the 787 a concept straddling both camps- being equally at home in the hub environment delivering a higher frequency solution compared with Airbus but also providing in the same unit a profit earner on leaner (and in many cases more customer convenient) point to point citypairs. The pioneer of large hubbing aircraft with the hugely successful B747 range is effectively downsizing its future unit favouring a relatively smaller long haul airplane. Now close to its first flight, embracing advanced manufacturing and structure technology that have not been without introduction issues, introduction to service is some 18 months behind the Airbus offering .

So the 2 manufacturers are genuinely about to follow separate paths in terms of their long haul products.


The major hubs airports have developed as a result of full service carriers serving major conurbations over many years. The introduction of the 747 variants allowed development of heavy volume hub to hub services using ultra large air transport units across a limited number of major hubs per continent. Hub airports having invested heavily to support the historic air traveller markets are now offering parts of the product that this customer market doesn't want or need- with less geographically convenient location, runway and terminal congestion, complex passenger processing and transit facilities and fallible baggage transfer functions being just a few of the issues.

Inconvenience for many and now with a 'green' impact, clearly a minimum number of hubs results in the position of that hub being less practical and convenient for an increasingly large proportion of air travellers.

Regional conurbations would prefer not to be dependant upon those remote hub locations and where possible stand alone with their own transport infrastructure. Will the ever more important green considerations and the need to reduce 'home to terminal' carbon emissions roll the dice in favour of the regional citypairs?


Will one strategy win over the other? -Who has understood the future of air transport better? Or have the manufacturers in focusing on differing strategies stumbled across solutions that will allow both to survive and thrive in these and future difficult times?

Based upon total profit achievement against each model over its production life cycle, will Boeing win the profit race ?or will it be Airbus?