Hello,
At the moment I am working on a well working Hub & Spoke system, which is working actually pretty fine. But there is always room for improvement, which are "the best" times to let your fleet arrive at your hub?
Bas
There is no "best time", you have to find out which times fit to your airline concept and the airport you use. How long are the transfer times? have it a nightflight ban? I prefer very short transfer times, so I have 8 hub times, but I usually start with 4, which are the main hub times and the additional 4 are regional destinations.
Here’s a neat trick that I came across months after I started my airline. I will illustrate this through an example. Perhaps some other senior players can correct me if i’m wrong.
You hub airports demand is calculated at 1600 every day.
If your flights depart at 1650 every day, then your last demand calculation occurs only just before your flight. This means that you have to wait longer to see if your planes are filling up.
If your flights depart at 1500, then your last demand calculation was done 23 hours ago. this means that now you have 23 hours to fill up any last seats on the plane through connecting traffic.
It’s not a huge deal, but I think it can help increase your load factor marginally - not because demand for a route changes with time (because it doesn’t) but because of the supply of seats available for a given rating.
Hope this rather abstract post makes some sense.
Saad