Hub-and-spoke

Before starting long haul flights, it is for the best to have at least 2000 feeder departures/arrivals. I was wondering, in order to fill up long haul flights the best possible way, is there a difference between having 2000 departures (hub) to only a couple destinations or having 500 different destinations but flying less regular? Or is it just about the amount of passengers transported and is the destination irrelevant? 

Its important to have a schedule that allows for the best optimal connections to those long haul flights. I've found that 2000 departures is typically about one hundred destinations.

Likewise, its a good idea to have feeder flights from regions that have some demand for your long-haul destination. Example, a Canada-US flight isn't going to help much with a US-Africa flight, but it will help with a US-EU flight.

The number of departures really doesn’t mean a lot.

The better you plan your operations and optimise your connections, the less departures it takes.

An airline with 5000 departures that goes deeply red as soon as AGEX goes low indicates that there’s something wrong…