phrase

• Denoting a system of air transportation in which local airports offer flights to a central airport where international or long-distance flights are available.

  ‘Further giving this concept fuel is the current state of the airlines, including the inefficient hub-and-spoke system, flight delays and intrusive airport security, not to mention service, or lack thereof, once aboard the airliner.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘‘The hub-and-spoke system is inherently more expensive to run than point-to-point,’ explained Jack Stephan, spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association.’
  • ‘The highly centralized hub-and-spoke system - centralized for the airlines, not us - now regularly bifurcates and often trifurcates even an hour's flight time as the crow flies into a four-hour series of legs.’
  • ‘Since the airlines created today's hub-and-spoke systems in the 1980s, fares have plummeted - but so has the effective speed of air travel, especially for trips that begin or end at spoke airports.’
  • ‘Using a central clearinghouse, along with a hub-and-spoke system of dissemination, enabled us to deliver, point-to-point, anywhere in the United States - absolutely, positively overnight.’
  • ‘Today, planes fly to 500 places in the hub-and-spoke system, and unless a passenger is going from one major city to another, he may have to change plans or endure long layovers.’
  • ‘Whoever controls this hub-and-spoke system will have the power to sell a whole family of gadgets to consumers.’
  • ‘For example, the hub-and-spoke system, which funnels passengers from smaller cities to major ones, was embraced by most big airlines after deregulation.’
  • ‘But hub-and-spoke systems are enormously expensive to run.’
  • ‘You're credited with being a pioneer of the hub-and-spoke system.’