Mint Explainer: What does it take to build an aviation hub?
Mint takes a look at the world's largest centres of international traffic, the benchmarks set by the world's busiest airports, and the key factors that drive their efficiency. An airport hub is characterized by a concentration of air traffic and flight operations. These airports act as transfer points for passengers to reach their final destination.
Traditionally, these hubs are also identified with one or two leading airlines that provide direct connectivity between major international cities and also to tier-2 and tier-3 cities with one-stop connectivity. This results in a hub-and-spoke model with airlines bringing massive air traffic to a hub airport, creating economies of scale and then distributing it via spokes to multiple destinations. Such a model enables airlines to serve more cities with fewer aircraft.
As per aviation research firm OAG, a mega-hub connectivity measures the effectiveness of an international airport as connecting points – globally and regionally – as well as gateways into domestic markets. It takes into account the number of scheduled connections to and from international flights as well as the number of destinations served from the airport. OAG has marked London Heathrow as the most connected airport in the world for 2023, followed by New York's JFK Airport, Amsterdam Airport of Netherlands, Kuala Lumpur Airport of Malaysia and Haneda Airport of Tokyo.
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