I was on AS one day and I noticed that Basel Airport had a 0% slot availability. I took a look at the airport and noticed an airline based there with around 3,500 departures and several destinations across every continent. This made me wonder, is it possible to turn a 6 bar airport into a mega airport like this guy did. For example I could turn Hartford into a global center or perhaps Abu Dhabi?
Here's the airline: http://ellinikon.airlinesim.aero/app/info/enterprises/5793?6
Yes with connections, but it will still stay a 6 bar airport. It will not become 10 bar airport, but it can still have more traffic than initially a 10 bar Airport, technically.
You can do this even with a 4-bar airport. The demand itself isnt important for a hub, you only need the ability to transfer passengers and good connections.
For a mega hub slot availability is he most important factor and most smaller airports dont have that many slots to offer so I would say no, if we both think of the same "mega hub". But smaller airports have shorter connection times so I will say yes to about 3000 departures when expansion will be almost impossible afterwards.
There are small airports with more slots then some big airports have. Some habe 10 slots per 5 min. And the small transfer time offer you more usable slots. Even availability is better, because small airports usually habe more then 80 Percent free slots. So it makes much easier to build up a hub.
I’m operating ex Glasgow Prestwick (PIK), a 4-bar-airport. Short Turnaround time (45min) combined with quite much slots (6 ā 5min) made this airport very attractive and allow me to sell over 4200 weekly departures, and still space for ~500 more.
So I think yes, you can generate a Mega Hub on a country airport! 
EDIT: Kaheel was faster!
Check out LIT and LEX on Kaitak. It's insane.
I wouldn't call it a mega hub, but this is my Ukranian adventure on Riem:
http://riem.airlinesim.aero/app/info/enterprises/35120
6 bar airport, with more than 5000 departures. Note that more than 86% of the passengers, is merely connecting through the airport. Which means statistically, only 700 of my departures, are actually meant for Kyiv. The rest are going somewhere else.
Yep, certainly possible with connections!
You can turn an airport like Phnom Penh into a megahub, too. :) It's been a while but...
Theoretically you can build a hub like this anywhere... on an empty server you can turn N'Djamena, Chad into an awesome hub for Africa and further for the world. :D
Not 2 million pax per week but pretty huge indeed http://fornebu.airlinesim.aero/app/info/enterprises/29919
Also not 2 Mio passengers but still… Pakistan with 2 5bar and 1 6bar Hubs: http://aspern.airlinesim.aero/app/info/enterprises/28895?29&tab=0
Sorry for bumping the thread, but I found it suitable to ask here.
I am kind of stuck with my airline base in Almaty. I think it’s quite good still achieve 45% profit margin as a whole, but I can’t find much possibility to expand. 25% of pax is connecting through my hub, so I am turning into a hub airline.
Any advice for me? Is that I should spend more time to connect 1-2 bar airport to my hub with smaller props? Is it not possible to add wide-body aircraft to my hub? Shall I focus on transfer routes, like adding two routes at one time to strengthen the connection? I am afraid the load will be only 40-50% if I add flights to secondary or less airport in China/Europe…
25% comnecting passengers is not high. You can have 100% which would be great.
I think you can expand and scale up.
I mean 75-80% are connecting lol…
My struggle is, now I would need to find go city pairs to funnel through my hub. It’s kind of difficult to schedule flights due to difference in distance, cannot always add 1 to east and 1 to west to fill up the plane.
If I add one to the east, it’s not working well as most of the flights to the west is already full. So is it true that a airline work mostly with connection is to add cities in a wave.
Well, let me put it that way…
If you established your schedule without waves in the first place, you’re really f*cked now.
You need to maximise the number of possible city pairs, not merely connecting two cities by one plane through your hub.
Yep.
I’d suggest to leave it as is and look for another airport to base an hub in. As for Kazakhstan, TSE would be the better choice anyways.
I actually did have wave system, else I couldn’t achieve a 80% connecting figure here. Perhaps in a short-term game world, so I have still a pretty good profit margin.
It’s just I felt I couldnt add more widebodies/more routees. Now, need to be creative so I am seeking some advice. Perhaps I would start another hub at TSE and drive more domestic demand. Thanks!
It’s hard but it can be done 
Syrian airlines on the previous Quimby was the 5th largest airline in the game world out of 6 bar Damascus and 4 bar Aleppo. I had an extremely loose wave layout but for the most part it was done without waves.
I’m sure he meant turning a hub without waves into one with.
Sure you can have success without a real structure on short living temp worlds as they are resetted before things start to get really difficult.