I think Lufthansa uses Frankfurt as its hub because of the Cold War. Berlin was deep in East Germany, split in half, and out of place to be a hub for West Germany. Even since reunification, the airport situation in Berlin hasn't been great, as it took them something like 20 years to build a single airport to replace the 3 or so smaller airports that used to serve the city.
Yes! That's the real reason. Plus: Berlin itself is a big city, but the whole Brandenburg region around Berlin is actually very sparsely populated - as opposed to the area around Frankfurt. (Berlin is also quite "poor" and economically insignificant in comparison to the south-west of Germany.)
Furthermore, the East German government only allowed three flight paths from the West into West Berlin, and it would've been highly inconvenient to try to get an international hub in West Berlin with only three ways for planes to get in and out.
There is quite a saga about Berlin’s airports. It will only be when and if (big if) that ever gets fully sorted that Berlin will ever be a major airport hub.
It’s important to recognize that some airlines’ hub layout are basically vestiges of mergers and acquisitions they’ve made over the years. For example: American (Dallas, Miami) & US Airways (Phoenix, Charlotte), and United (Chicago, Denver) & Continental (Houston, Newark).
America West Airlines purchased US airways. US hub is Philadelphia, AWA ..now AA has same flight attendants who were proud America West Airlines! Study more! Awa and US airways and other airlines are under AA umbrella
@@barbaracameron5610 Actually I think it was US Airways that bought out America West...and then American bought out US Airways. AWA had hubs in Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Columbus, OH...CMH...which was used because the range of their aircraft. AWA was a great airline...the merger with US Fear (they put the fear back in flying, as the joke goes) was sad. Was frequent flyer on AWA and AA...switched to Delta for their much better customer service and far superior baggage handling.
@@lfd_eng9219 Wiki says US Airways was bankrupt and America West took them over, but it was a reverse merger and they kept the US Airways name. The same thing happened with American Airlines.
@@texastuna Yup. Doug Parker the CEO purchased US Airways, and kept the US Airways name since it was the larger carrier, and much better known. He did the same thing with American Airlines and purchased it while in bankruptcy, but kept the better name.
Recently, I’ve dabbled into some other geography channels here on UA-cam just to diversify a little. Without mentioning any names, watching these videos seemed very official, calculated, manufactured, and scripted, if that makes sense (those are the words I could think of lol). And I realized that that wasn’t very enjoyable so I keep coming back to you, Kyle, and your laid back, low-budget videos that are just superior, in my opinion. So basically, please don’t become like “them” and be all fancy with it. It’s enjoyable the way it is, for me at least.
Hi, I can explain why Frankfurt is Lufthansa's hub. It's partly for historical reasons and partly for economic reasons. The hub was established in Frankfurt decades ago because Frankfurt was located centrally in West Germany. West Germany's rail network connected really well with Frankfurt Airport, including high-speed trains by the late 1900s, so that it was quick and easy for people from many parts of West Germany to travel by rail to the Frankfurt Airport for flights out of the country. By contrast, when Germany was divided, so was Berlin. West Berlin was isolated and not terribly important economically, plus the airspace around it was controlled by East Germany, so it was not in the running as a hub for a western airline. After German unification, there was little reason to move the hub from Frankfurt to Berlin. First, moving would have been expensive. But more importantly, even in united Germany, Berlin remains somewhat isolated. The bulk of united Germany's population is in the west, centered near Frankfurt, and united Germany's economy is also centered in the west. There are no other big cities near Berlin, as there are near Frankfurt. Berlin is the center of government, but Germany's private sector is mostly based in western cities centered on Frankfurt, whose airport still has its good rail connections in several directions. Frankfurt also remains Germany's financial hub, so foreign businesspeople are much more likely to want to be in Frankfurt than in Berlin.
This is a pretty accurate explanation for the Frankfurt airport situation. It's worth adding that there were plans for establishing BER as a hub of Air Berlin, Lufthansa's primary local rival between 2001 and 2017. But the airline was managed about as poorly as the airport construction and these plans died together with the endless delays of the aiport opening and the insolvency of Air Berlin. BER will stay a point-to-point connection aiport for a very long time now, because even now that BER has opened, the airport doesn't come close to today's passenger expectations. They would most likely need to build a brand-new terminal dedicated to a hub-and-spoke model similar to what Lufthansa did in Munich with Terminal 2.
One thing that you kind of miss is the role of mergers in determining the "hub" system. Delta picked up MSP and DTW as hubs because they were the hubs for Northwest and when Delta merged with NW, they picked up those hubs while scrapping the traditional "Delta Hub" of Cincinnati (CVG). Likewise, American picked up PHX from America West and PHL and CLT from USAir...at the same time, American abandoned the earlier USAir hub at Pittsburgh and the old TWA hub at STL. United picked up the hubs at EWR and HOU from Continental while abandoning the old Continental hub at CLE and the old United hub at SEA. And this isn't really a "new" trend either... Delta got Salt Lake City when they bought Western Airlines in the 1980's and American bought the MIA hub from Eastern and the Latin American routes from Pan Am. So, as airlines merge and shuffle assets, hubs and their routes come-and-go.
The Charlotte hub goes back to the US Air days, when it acquired Piedmont, which major depot and hub was Winston-Salem. Because of its expansion from buying small regional carriers, Piedmont moved from Winston-Salem to Charlotte.
US Airways abandoned Pittsburgh as a hub long before the merger with American, and American abandoned StL shortly after taking over TWA. Also, Delta abandoning CVG in favor of DTW makes a lot of sense as Detroit is a bigger and better positioned metro geographically than Cincinnati and Detroit still has a lot of economic importance as the hub for the American auto industry even though it has shrank, while Cincy is dying as a business and banking hub as evidenced for example by Chiquita leaving it for Charlotte several years ago.
Pastor Kliner, good response, but with a CORRECTION: After the Continental/United merger, United took over the large international hub at Houston Itercontinental (IAH) -- NOT "HOU", as you state. "HOU" is Houston Hobby International -- the 2nd and smaller international airport in Houston. Southwest paid to expand and upgrade HOU (Hobby) to an international airport as their gateway to Latin America. United's hub is IAH and they don't even serve HOU.
Frankfurt was in the heart of (West-)Germany until 1989 and the major hub for that reason. Until very recently Berlin didn't have a big airport so couldn't take over the role of Frankfurt as the main hub in Germany. And as you mentioned Berlin is still very east for most Germans.
As a German I cringed watching that part of the video. Unfortunately Kyle does not consider how incredibly central Frankfurt is for where most Germans actually live - along Rhein-Ruhr-Main-Neckar rivers. It‘s not by coincidence that it’s also the largest railway hub in Germany. And the reason it’s Germany‘s business capital is the same - it’s been an independent city well connected with rivers and valleys to everywhere for a long time
@@jonathanbunemann8851 I was about to say. In terms of Germany, Berlin is nothing - it's basically Poland. Frankfurt area is where most of the population is.
Regarding the Denver to New Delhi distance thing, both Air India and Air Canada always fly east when connecting the North American west coast and New Delhi (or at least they did when I was flying that route regularly), as the prevailing tailwinds are more advantageous than reduced distance in terms of fuel usage.
but nation states aren't the ones doling business out, right; Corporateria have l o n g known how to cloak these stealthily creepy manœuvres of theirs..agreed? ;)
Ethiopian Airline actually has a long and honorable history. They date back to the 40’s being formed right after WW2. They have had long haul international service since the 50’s, and operated jets since the very early 60’s. They are certainly not the fly by night new comer that many make them out to be.
Many cargo planes just refuel and change crews and off they go. My neighbor works for UPS at the ANC facility. If you look at an air traffic app you can get an idea of where the planes are coming from and going to. I see many of these planes climbing out heading to eastern USA.
I'd like to look into that. I did a little preliminary research on agricultural flights and getting fresh fruits and vegetables to far off places quickly but it would've ended up being a video on its own. So I may have to do something with cargo and ag airports.
@@GeographyKing I know COSTCO used to truck the west coast produce up here . The guy that had the contract had 3 trucks and each had 2 drivers so they could run long days. I’ve been though that airport hundreds of times.
Anchorage was also a big hub/stopover point during the Cold War when air traffic could not fly over the USSR and aircraft could not fly as far they do today.
While Memphis, TN does not have a very large passenger service, it is either at #1 or #2 worldwide for cargo. Memphis was #1 in 2020, and held to #1 spot for ten or more years in the 90s, 2000s. Hong Kong is #1 currently and has been #1 for most of the last ten years.
Tracking hubs is interesting cause it gives insight to what cities are growing vs dying. Basically if you have an airline hub and lose it/close it, your city goes into decline (St Louis, Cleveland, Memphis)
Hubs are an interesting thing. You don't need to be a huge city to have a large hub. Many hubs rely on connecting traffic, not local. Also Delta's DTW hub is smaller than MSP, but DTW has by far more international (European/Asian) destinations whereas MSP has more international destinations in Mexico and Caribbean than DTW.
One of the main reasons American has it's east coast hub in Charlotte is that it was the home airport of Piedmont Air until 1989, and US Air until 2015, when that airline was purchased by American. Piedmont Air was headquartered in Winston-Salem, NC, and there was an internal debate within the company as to whether Winston-Salem or Charlotte should be the home airport for the airline. CLT won out, and now I'm pretty sure the W-S airport doesn't have any regularly scheduled flights anymore,since all of the local flights now operate out of Piedmont Triad International in Greensboro
The relative lack of western mega hubs is not a new phenomenon. Perhaps things would have been different if carriers like Reno Air and America West had stayed independent in the years after 9/11.
@@mrtodd3620Seattle is still Delta’s worst performing hub, behind both JFK and LAX (the other two hubs where they have serious competition), to say nothing of Delta’s fortress hubs (ATL, MSP, DTW, SLC). Also, with Alaska acquiring Hawaiian, there’s no way the DOJ would ever approve an AA/AS merger, so the two would likely simply concentrate in the east and west respectively, while United and Delta have to manage networks across the entire country (fwiw, they have Air Canada and Aeromexico to help a bit, but that’s not much).
The New York and Singapore city pairs also has the same distance east and west. Now that Russian airspace is closed, Singapore actually runs all the routes going east to catch the winds, so if you take the flights back to back you got around the globe.
Delta’s hub used to be in Cincinnati but after they declared bankruptcy, they left. They basically built CVG but now it’s a hub for Amazon and is the fastest growing cargo airport in North America
I didn’t know CVG was the fastest growing cargo airport in the US, but being Cincinnati residents, we enjoy (and recommend, especially for families) the CVG Viewing Area , and have noticed large cargo planes frequently landing at CVG from places like Anchorage and Japan.
The merger with Northwest gifted Delta with much stronger assets in Detroit and Minneapolis, so they no longer needed Cincinnati and Memphis. Detroit is now Delta's #2 hub.
I used to love flying through the Cincinnati airport and would try to schedule my cross country flights to go through there. They had some great restaurants at the airport.
Beauty video and excellent graphics! Air Canada has lost a lot of pax due to a few new airlines in Canada - Flair, Swoop (Westjet), Lynx, Canada Airlines and expansion of Porter Airlines.
I’ve been on that flight between Dallas and Melbourne on Qantas. By far the longest flights I’ve ever been on in my life. I really had to mentally prepare myself for those flights, and I’ve only gone over and back just once. You just have to accept that it’s that long, sleep as much as you can, get up and walk around every few hours, and bring things to do with you or watch movies or TV. If that flight was sprung on you last minute, it would be VERY hard. But if you know far enough in advance and can prepare for it, it’s not that bad. I’d never let the simple length of a flight stop me from visiting a place. Well worth it once you’re there.
@@n7y8c7 Like I was saying above, you just have to realize the length of the flight well in advance, treat it like sort of being in any other single place for a long time and plan things to keep yourself busy, and know that it’ll all be worth it to visit where you’re going. But I mean, nowadays you have a whole infotainment system in front of you with hundreds of things to choose from. And the lights are dim enough it’s not too difficult to sleep. Plus you’re served at least 3 meals on that flight. It’s a big plane too, so personally I like aisle seats so I can keep getting up to move around whenever I want. But ideally for a flight like that, I would LOVE to fly first class. If any s flight where that would feel great, it’s those. But unfortunately since that size plane has closed off sleeper “suites” for a lot of first class, and because of the distance, that class is prohibitively expensive for most people. I know I’ve never been able to fly anything but coach overseas.
@@cgimovieman Absolutely! I've taken Delta One to Stuttgart and compared to the trip I had in economy before that to Amsterdam, the difference was night and day. I barely slept, but I was definitely comfortable. I'd like to try the SkyCouch on Air New Zealand.
@@n7y8c7 Delta has long been my airline for decades as well. Although it was Northwest before Delta absorbed them years back now. New Zealand has been right at the top of my “to visit” list for a very long long time now. But despite travel being maybe my number one hobby, I just haven’t had the financial means to travel that far in quite a while. I used to get to travel for me work very frequently until about 2008/2009, but sadly my company downsized, I lost my job, and ever since then I’ve been on my own more or less for travel.
7:40 Istanbul also has a brand new huge airport, that probably is a reason why the city made a huge jump in the rankings. 9:45 Historically, another airline (AirBerlin) used to mainly fly out of Berlin, but those guys went defunct. Despite Berlin also having a big 'new' airport Lufthansa hasn't jumped onto it, and the carrier remains strong in the West German heartland where it started out. Germany also has a good internal rail network so there is less reason for Lufthansa to expand their hubs to more cities.
this is one of my favorite geography topics. love to look at those route maps. whenever I’m on a plane, that’s the first thing I go to in the back of the magazines (mot sure if they still have them though post-covid, haven’t flown yet).
The newest startup Avelo is breaking trends, utilizing small airports as their bases and doing flights out and back (meaning the pilots and flight attendants get to go back home every night). They seem to be growing fast. I hope their trend-defying operations hold and they continue to grow!
It would be really concerning if a startup wasn’t growing. The thing if the connect smaller airports they can’t crack larger cities. Like Denver is a big city with one airport.
@@Speedster___ Fair point! They do fly to bigger airports Baltimore Washington International (BWI), Orlando (MCO), and Chicago Midway (MDW) but it would be nice if they would use those as connecting points instead of just flying out there and back to their small "base" airports (their hubs).
@@johnlundkeller the thing is they can become like a mid 2000s Southwest but Becuase of operational model they just can not fly into bigger airports. Like midway is big but it’s very clearly the secondary airport. BWI is kinda like that too with DC near. Imo Avelo best expansion path is to find mid sized cities and then connect them to non regional big cities secondary airports. One random example would be Midway to Tucson
So is breeze airlines, which is also doing very well right now. So many budget airlines are using this chance to improve hard and it's great to see. Always fun to walk through a small airport in a couple of minutes
Many of these hubs are ones inherited from Airlines they took over American got Philly, Phoenix and Charlotte when they bought out US Airways who in turn got Phoenix from America West and Charlotte from Piedmont. SImilarly, Delta got Detroit and Minneapolis-St. Paul from Northwest.
8:08 Delhi’s new international Terminal 3, as part of its expansion of the original airport in 2010, has allowed it to ramp up, so to speak, from being outside the 25 airports over the last dozen years to number 7 in the most recent poll.
Very helpful, Mr. Kyle, gracias. I'll save this video to help me select airlines and more direct routes. However, I prefer to drive so I can see the places I used to fly over. Much more interesting.
The American legacy carriers (AA, DL, UA) are now a product of many mergers and acquisitions of airlines like Contential, Northwest, Eastern, America West, Western, TWA, and US Air. You can see those roots in the locations off some of their hubs. The hub locations are more a product of history than spacial practicality.
Many people are (correctly) pointing out that Lufthansa’s biggest hub is in Frankfurt because it was centrally located in West Germany, but everyone is forgetting one crucial detail. East Germany forbade any and all West German registered aircraft from flying over its airspace, effectively banning them from flying to Berlin; only aircraft registered in the United States, UK, and France were allowed to fly over their airspace. Hence why Pan Am and British Airways had vast networks of flying flights within Germany during the Cold War. Meanwhile West German airlines, including Lufthansa, did not even fly to Berlin until AFTER German reunification in 1990. Air Berlin, an airline based in Berlin we remember as German, was actually an American airline when it was founded and flew American registered aircraft until German reunification, when it ‘relocated’ to Germany.
Following airlines, hubs, routes has always been a hobby of mine since I've been a kid. This video is very interesting. I'm not sure if it's a geography thing, but it is also interesting how each of these airlines acquired the hubs and focus cities they did. As well as some of the cities that used to be hubs but are not any longer. St. Louis for TWA/American. Memphis for Northwest/Delta. Cincinatti for Delta.
Air Canada's hubs are also pretty simple - Vancouver for west coast and pacific, Toronto for east coast and atlantic. Also WestJet is based in Calgary and basically is its only hub. It's also no longer a budget airline - it transitioned to becoming full service in like 2018.
Love this topic. Would have liked to hear any comments about how Alaska Airlines fits into the schemes you describe, given that it is also a top 5 carrier.
Yeah, I was hoping to learn more about southwest. Now I'm even more confused why you can't go to some cities via southwest if they don't rely on the "spoke" method like most.:-p
@@crabring I could be completely wrong, but I think it has to do, in part, with the expense of getting slots at large airports where legacy carriers have significant footprints. I’m pretty sure that was the case in the NYC metro area (where I grew up): for a long time, if you wanted to fly Southwest, you had to go to Philly or (I think) Islip, because the legacy carriers all had big presences at JFK, EWR, and LGA, though I think they now fly out of LGA, at least. I now live near BWI, which isn’t a hub for anyone, and where Southwest has something like an 85-90% market share.
I think Alaska has a good footing in the up-and-down the coast market. Seattle and Portland are pretty far out of the way with no major population centers anywhere near, so the larger airlines tend to not fly those routes. But for Alaska they basically have cornered a market left relatively untapped. We flew with them from Fresno to Cabo San Lucas in Baja California.
A little flying humor here from a OKC comedian (not me). Oklahoma City's airports are Wiley Post for their regional airport and the late great humorist Will Rodgers for their internationalairport. Wiley Post was Will Rodgers personal pilot and they perished in the same plane crash.....
Correction for Lufthansa, it’s more simple than you think, the airport in Berlin is smaller than Frankfurt and it took them so long to replace it after the Cold War and reunification of Germany. So Frankfurt airport has always been the hub for Lufthansa, also nowadays Munich has become a hub for Lufthansa as well and it’s the main hub for Lufthansa’s both the airbus a350 and soon a380 flights, meanwhile Frankfurt is the main hub for the Airbus a340, Boeing 787 and 747 flights
Atlanta is the busiest hub in the world because of its location. It can reach 2/3 of the US population within a two hour flight. That’s something NY, LA, Chicago and Dallas can’t do.
Airport hub history: Seattle: Was a large base for Northwest (merged with Delta). They used to work with Alaska for the local stuff but DL and AS had a falling out after the merger. SLC: Originally a hub for Western Airlines (merged with Delta) PHX: Hub for America West who later bought USAirways but kept the latter name. USAirways then bought American and again kept the latter name. MSP: Northwest hub before merger with Delta DTW: North Central hub before they merged with Southern to form Republic which later merged with Northwest IAH: Continental hub due in part to their history with Texas International. Became a United hub when CO and UA merged. Newark: Was the hub of PeoplExpress before Continental bought them in 1987. Before PE, Newark was a fairly quiet and empty place. CO grew the place using a new terminal (C) PE had designed and started construction on. United got it in the merger with CO and this is why they don’t find JFK worth serving despite trying again to do so recently. Both AA and UA have hubs in Texas and O’Hare. Southwest is a Texas airline that grew to have a major operation at Chicago-Midway, and even helped getting the new, much larger, terminal built there. I don’t see how any decline in Chicago or Illinois has any relevance to the fates of those three airlines.
I used to fly to St. Louis from Little Rock a lot on Southwest in 2005 because Busch Stadium 2 was being demolished once the season ended. I loved it. Soon as I got off the plane, I would take the MetroLink directly into Downtown and get off at the Stadium exit. Great times!
Growing up in Pittsburgh, USAirways/USAir used in Greater Pittsburgh Airport as its hub. You could get a non-stop flight to almost anywhere in the US from Pittsburgh
United hubs cover every region of the US and pretty much EVERY major business center in the country. Easily the BEST in the US. UA can get you ANYWHERE in the world from their hubs non-stop or one stop at the least. 20+ year veteran of the industry.
Thank you so much for your video. Back in 1989 I worked for an air freight company and I would fly from San Francisco to Tokyo and then to Hong Kong and spend a day in Hong Kong and back to Tokyo and then back to San Francisco twice a week. It was so fun for a while but I got burnt out and had to give it up. Well I’ll be looking for your next video 👍🌎
Delta's map has changed the most. They used to have CVG and DFW, now they're stronger across the northern tier (DTW, MSP, SEA, BOS). American have the best combination of hubs across the sun belt now. United have the best set up for international travel and premium-paying business travelers.
MSP as a Delta hub is at least in part a legacy of it having been the base and headquarters for Northwest Airlines, which was swallowed up by Delta. Before the hub-and-spoke era, MSP was a small-ish airport and not a major transfer point.
As for frankfurt, Im quite certain the 2 biggest reasons are 1. Located in west germany, 2. Economic capital of germany, a much more financial and business oriented city so just a lot more business traffic, as well as being closer situated to the Ruhr with fast train connections.
I have watched and enjoyed a lot of your videos, including this very interesting one. Thank you Kyle! The airline industry was hugely impacted by the recent pandemic. And now for some older history about a former airline that was the world’s leading airline from the late 40’s through the 70s: Pan American World Airways. In 1947, Pan Am began the first regularly scheduled around-the-world passenger service using using Lockheed Constellations (a propeller-driven, four-engine pressurized-cabin civil airliner built from 1943 to 1958). Pan American Flight 001 originated in San Francisco and flew westward to Honolulu, on across the Pacific to Hong Kong, and continued around the world to Bangkok (Thailand), Delhi (India), Beirut (Lebanon), Istanbul (Turkey), Frankfurt (Germany), London (England) and finally to New York. The entire flight took about 48 hours. Its counterpart, Pan Am Flight 002, originated in New York and flew eastward around the world to the same cities. [Information from WIRED and Wikipedia articles.] In the summer of 1972, my wife and flew on Pan Am Flight 002 halfway around its global route, flying on a Boeing 747 from JFK in New York to London, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Karachi (Pakistan) and New Delhi. We returned a month later on Pan Am Flight 001 from New Delhi, to Beirut, Frankfort, London, to New York with breakfast served after each stop (as I recall). We got in very late to JFK and slept in the airport. We were both 20 then. It was overall, an amazing adventure!
Good video. American is the largest airline in the world because of a merger they had with Northwest, nothing really to do with their hub locations. Side note: Once I heard “North America “, I knew he was Canadian because Americans never say “North America”..idk why that is. For instance, if there is a building that’s the tallest in all of North America but it’s located in Chicago Americans will just say it’s the “tallest building in the U.S.” without any mention of North America whatsoever, however, say the tallest building in North America was hypothetically placed in Montreal, Canadians would then say it’s the “tallest building in North America.”
The SW Airlines map at 5:47 has an odd way of naming a few cities. Specifically Lilac City instead of Spokane, Mile High City instead of Denver, and Big Apple and New Ark.
Nice South Carolina license plate. Looks a lot better than the ones we are stuck with now. Great job on all the videos. Appreciate the info. Keep up the good work.
Southwest is a perfect airline for airports like where I live in in Albany NY. Smaller airport, smaller city, but with tons of people interested in traveling to bigger cities without having to go all the way to NYC first
I noticed the Easter eggs on Southwest's map... Big Apple, Mile High City and Lilac City. They stuck out because I watched the "nickname" video yesterday lol.
The recent growth of Turkish Air is probably been helped by the massive new Istanbul Airport opened in 2018 designed to handle being a top Europe-Asia hub.
During the cold war, German airlines were prohibited from flying to Berlin -- only the airlines from the four occupying powers could fly there. Thus, Lufthansa built a hub at Frankfurt, which was near the middle West Germany (at least north to south) and reasonably close to the capital, which was Bonn.
I think whether they draw the route as "east" or "west" on those super long routes is really the same thing. The plane would actually just fly north, over the pole, and then south down the other side. It just looks "east" or "west" on the flat map.
The Chicago metro population has continued upward over many years. The city itself has declined, but suburban growth more than makes up for that. The real issue with O'Hare is that there is no room for expansion since the airport is well within the city limits.
Air New Zealand used to be the last company to fly around the world. You could fly from Auckland to Asia to London, then London to Los Angeles to Auckland. Not sure if that will return
I think Lufthansa uses Frankfurt as its hub because of the Cold War. Berlin was deep in East Germany, split in half, and out of place to be a hub for West Germany. Even since reunification, the airport situation in Berlin hasn't been great, as it took them something like 20 years to build a single airport to replace the 3 or so smaller airports that used to serve the city.
@@johnchastain7890 Bonn was the capital actually :) but its true nonetheless
Yes! That's the real reason. Plus: Berlin itself is a big city, but the whole Brandenburg region around Berlin is actually very sparsely populated - as opposed to the area around Frankfurt. (Berlin is also quite "poor" and economically insignificant in comparison to the south-west of Germany.)
Furthermore, the East German government only allowed three flight paths from the West into West Berlin, and it would've been highly inconvenient to try to get an international hub in West Berlin with only three ways for planes to get in and out.
@@bene4577 Oops, richtig bist! I apologize to the Boon Chamber of Commerce. ;-)
There is quite a saga about Berlin’s airports. It will only be when and if (big if) that ever gets fully sorted that Berlin will ever be a major airport hub.
It’s important to recognize that some airlines’ hub layout are basically vestiges of mergers and acquisitions they’ve made over the years. For example: American (Dallas, Miami) & US Airways (Phoenix, Charlotte), and United (Chicago, Denver) & Continental (Houston, Newark).
And when Delta bought out Northwest they acquired Minneapolis and Detroit hubs.
America West Airlines purchased US airways. US hub is Philadelphia, AWA ..now AA has same flight attendants who were proud America West Airlines! Study more! Awa and US airways and other airlines are under AA umbrella
@@barbaracameron5610 Actually I think it was US Airways that bought out America West...and then American bought out US Airways. AWA had hubs in Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Columbus, OH...CMH...which was used because the range of their aircraft. AWA was a great airline...the merger with US Fear (they put the fear back in flying, as the joke goes) was sad. Was frequent flyer on AWA and AA...switched to Delta for their much better customer service and far superior baggage handling.
@@lfd_eng9219 Wiki says US Airways was bankrupt and America West took them over, but it was a reverse merger and they kept the US Airways name. The same thing happened with American Airlines.
@@texastuna Yup. Doug Parker the CEO purchased US Airways, and kept the US Airways name since it was the larger carrier, and much better known. He did the same thing with American Airlines and purchased it while in bankruptcy, but kept the better name.
Recently, I’ve dabbled into some other geography channels here on UA-cam just to diversify a little. Without mentioning any names, watching these videos seemed very official, calculated, manufactured, and scripted, if that makes sense (those are the words I could think of lol). And I realized that that wasn’t very enjoyable so I keep coming back to you, Kyle, and your laid back, low-budget videos that are just superior, in my opinion. So basically, please don’t become like “them” and be all fancy with it. It’s enjoyable the way it is, for me at least.
They’re doing hub and spoke, and Kyle is going Southwest style.
Hi, I can explain why Frankfurt is Lufthansa's hub. It's partly for historical reasons and partly for economic reasons. The hub was established in Frankfurt decades ago because Frankfurt was located centrally in West Germany. West Germany's rail network connected really well with Frankfurt Airport, including high-speed trains by the late 1900s, so that it was quick and easy for people from many parts of West Germany to travel by rail to the Frankfurt Airport for flights out of the country. By contrast, when Germany was divided, so was Berlin. West Berlin was isolated and not terribly important economically, plus the airspace around it was controlled by East Germany, so it was not in the running as a hub for a western airline. After German unification, there was little reason to move the hub from Frankfurt to Berlin. First, moving would have been expensive. But more importantly, even in united Germany, Berlin remains somewhat isolated. The bulk of united Germany's population is in the west, centered near Frankfurt, and united Germany's economy is also centered in the west. There are no other big cities near Berlin, as there are near Frankfurt. Berlin is the center of government, but Germany's private sector is mostly based in western cities centered on Frankfurt, whose airport still has its good rail connections in several directions. Frankfurt also remains Germany's financial hub, so foreign businesspeople are much more likely to want to be in Frankfurt than in Berlin.
Berlin is only popular with those on Nostalgic Nazi tourism and landmarks 🤣🤣🤣
This is a pretty accurate explanation for the Frankfurt airport situation.
It's worth adding that there were plans for establishing BER as a hub of Air Berlin, Lufthansa's primary local rival between 2001 and 2017. But the airline was managed about as poorly as the airport construction and these plans died together with the endless delays of the aiport opening and the insolvency of Air Berlin.
BER will stay a point-to-point connection aiport for a very long time now, because even now that BER has opened, the airport doesn't come close to today's passenger expectations. They would most likely need to build a brand-new terminal dedicated to a hub-and-spoke model similar to what Lufthansa did in Munich with Terminal 2.
i thought it would be munic as the main hub
One thing that you kind of miss is the role of mergers in determining the "hub" system. Delta picked up MSP and DTW as hubs because they were the hubs for Northwest and when Delta merged with NW, they picked up those hubs while scrapping the traditional "Delta Hub" of Cincinnati (CVG). Likewise, American picked up PHX from America West and PHL and CLT from USAir...at the same time, American abandoned the earlier USAir hub at Pittsburgh and the old TWA hub at STL. United picked up the hubs at EWR and HOU from Continental while abandoning the old Continental hub at CLE and the old United hub at SEA. And this isn't really a "new" trend either... Delta got Salt Lake City when they bought Western Airlines in the 1980's and American bought the MIA hub from Eastern and the Latin American routes from Pan Am. So, as airlines merge and shuffle assets, hubs and their routes come-and-go.
The Charlotte hub goes back to the US Air days, when it acquired Piedmont, which major depot and hub was Winston-Salem. Because of its expansion from buying small regional carriers, Piedmont moved from Winston-Salem to Charlotte.
US Airways abandoned Pittsburgh as a hub long before the merger with American, and American abandoned StL shortly after taking over TWA. Also, Delta abandoning CVG in favor of DTW makes a lot of sense as Detroit is a bigger and better positioned metro geographically than Cincinnati and Detroit still has a lot of economic importance as the hub for the American auto industry even though it has shrank, while Cincy is dying as a business and banking hub as evidenced for example by Chiquita leaving it for Charlotte several years ago.
Pastor Kliner, good response, but with a CORRECTION: After the Continental/United merger, United took over the large international hub at Houston Itercontinental (IAH) -- NOT "HOU", as you state. "HOU" is Houston Hobby International -- the 2nd and smaller international airport in Houston.
Southwest paid to expand and upgrade HOU (Hobby) to an international airport as their gateway to Latin America. United's hub is IAH and they don't even serve HOU.
IAH not HOU. HOU is Hobby Airport (Southwest Airlines hub)
American got their MIA hub ONLY from Eastern. Pan Am's MIA hub was acquired by United who failed to capitalise on it and ended it just after 9/11
Frankfurt was in the heart of (West-)Germany until 1989 and the major hub for that reason. Until very recently Berlin didn't have a big airport so couldn't take over the role of Frankfurt as the main hub in Germany. And as you mentioned Berlin is still very east for most Germans.
iirc Frankfurt also the most important financial center in Germany
As a German I cringed watching that part of the video. Unfortunately Kyle does not consider how incredibly central Frankfurt is for where most Germans actually live - along Rhein-Ruhr-Main-Neckar rivers. It‘s not by coincidence that it’s also the largest railway hub in Germany. And the reason it’s Germany‘s business capital is the same - it’s been an independent city well connected with rivers and valleys to everywhere for a long time
It makes a lot of sense looking at a population density map of Germany why Frankfurt is so important
@@jonathanbunemann8851 I cringed a bit too :D but I guess, it's quite difficult to understand without the german point of view
@@jonathanbunemann8851 I was about to say. In terms of Germany, Berlin is nothing - it's basically Poland. Frankfurt area is where most of the population is.
Hey Kyle.
I’m a 30 year airline employee and an airline geek. You did a nice job! Keep up the good work…
Regarding the Denver to New Delhi distance thing, both Air India and Air Canada always fly east when connecting the North American west coast and New Delhi (or at least they did when I was flying that route regularly), as the prevailing tailwinds are more advantageous than reduced distance in terms of fuel usage.
The fact that Ethiopian airlines is becoming a major hub is super interesting
Ethiopia has been heavily modernizing for the last 20 years. They’re now competing with Egypt with the Nile River.
but nation states aren't the ones doling business out, right; Corporateria have l o n g known how to cloak these stealthily creepy manœuvres of theirs..agreed? ;)
Ethiopian Airline actually has a long and honorable history. They date back to the 40’s being formed right after WW2. They have had long haul international service since the 50’s, and operated jets since the very early 60’s. They are certainly not the fly by night new comer that many make them out to be.
Yes, very interesting. Every thing I hear about Ethiopia is (relatively) positive. Hmmm, even craving some Ethiopian food.
@@roverdover4449 except for the crashed Boeing plane
Air travel + geography! Thanks for keeping us entertained Kyle!
Can you do one with cargo airports? Anchorage is an interesting hub for worldwide cargo and I’m curious to see how FedEx, ups, DHL etc. operates.
Many cargo planes just refuel and change crews and off they go. My neighbor works for UPS at the ANC facility. If you look at an air traffic app you can get an idea of where the planes are coming from and going to. I see many of these planes climbing out heading to eastern USA.
I'd like to look into that. I did a little preliminary research on agricultural flights and getting fresh fruits and vegetables to far off places quickly but it would've ended up being a video on its own. So I may have to do something with cargo and ag airports.
@@GeographyKing I know COSTCO used to truck the west coast produce up here . The guy that had the contract had 3 trucks and each had 2 drivers so they could run long days. I’ve been though that airport hundreds of times.
Anchorage was also a big hub/stopover point during the Cold War when air traffic could not fly over the USSR and aircraft could not fly as far they do today.
While Memphis, TN does not have a very large passenger service, it is either at #1 or #2 worldwide for cargo. Memphis was #1 in 2020, and held to #1 spot for ten or more years in the 90s, 2000s. Hong Kong is #1 currently and has been #1 for most of the last ten years.
Tracking hubs is interesting cause it gives insight to what cities are growing vs dying. Basically if you have an airline hub and lose it/close it, your city goes into decline (St Louis, Cleveland, Memphis)
Hubs are an interesting thing. You don't need to be a huge city to have a large hub. Many hubs rely on connecting traffic, not local. Also Delta's DTW hub is smaller than MSP, but DTW has by far more international (European/Asian) destinations whereas MSP has more international destinations in Mexico and Caribbean than DTW.
One of the main reasons American has it's east coast hub in Charlotte is that it was the home airport of Piedmont Air until 1989, and US Air until 2015, when that airline was purchased by American. Piedmont Air was headquartered in Winston-Salem, NC, and there was an internal debate within the company as to whether Winston-Salem or Charlotte should be the home airport for the airline. CLT won out, and now I'm pretty sure the W-S airport doesn't have any regularly scheduled flights anymore,since all of the local flights now operate out of Piedmont Triad International in Greensboro
Flying into the Salt Lake airport is drop dead gorgeous.
Very interesting, especially comparing pre- and post-pandemic.
thank you for such extremely detailed commentary accompanied with maps!
That AA map really does a good job of showing why Alaska airlines exists 😂
The relative lack of western mega hubs is not a new phenomenon. Perhaps things would have been different if carriers like Reno Air and America West had stayed independent in the years after 9/11.
One of these days AA and Alaska will merge, and they will then compete with Delta, which has built up Seattle since United left.
@@mrtodd3620Seattle is still Delta’s worst performing hub, behind both JFK and LAX (the other two hubs where they have serious competition), to say nothing of Delta’s fortress hubs (ATL, MSP, DTW, SLC).
Also, with Alaska acquiring Hawaiian, there’s no way the DOJ would ever approve an AA/AS merger, so the two would likely simply concentrate in the east and west respectively, while United and Delta have to manage networks across the entire country (fwiw, they have Air Canada and Aeromexico to help a bit, but that’s not much).
The New York and Singapore city pairs also has the same distance east and west. Now that Russian airspace is closed, Singapore actually runs all the routes going east to catch the winds, so if you take the flights back to back you got around the globe.
Delta’s hub used to be in Cincinnati but after they declared bankruptcy, they left. They basically built CVG but now it’s a hub for Amazon and is the fastest growing cargo airport in North America
I didn’t know CVG was the fastest growing cargo airport in the US, but being Cincinnati residents, we enjoy (and recommend, especially for families) the CVG Viewing Area , and have noticed large cargo planes frequently landing at CVG from places like Anchorage and Japan.
The merger with Northwest gifted Delta with much stronger assets in Detroit and Minneapolis, so they no longer needed Cincinnati and Memphis. Detroit is now Delta's #2 hub.
I used to love flying through the Cincinnati airport and would try to schedule my cross country flights to go through there. They had some great restaurants at the airport.
@@fixpacifica I hope you had the chili spaghetti 🍝
The airport is located in Kentucky
Beauty video and excellent graphics! Air Canada has lost a lot of pax due to a few new airlines in Canada - Flair, Swoop (Westjet), Lynx, Canada Airlines and expansion of Porter Airlines.
I’ve been on that flight between Dallas and Melbourne on Qantas. By far the longest flights I’ve ever been on in my life. I really had to mentally prepare myself for those flights, and I’ve only gone over and back just once. You just have to accept that it’s that long, sleep as much as you can, get up and walk around every few hours, and bring things to do with you or watch movies or TV. If that flight was sprung on you last minute, it would be VERY hard. But if you know far enough in advance and can prepare for it, it’s not that bad. I’d never let the simple length of a flight stop me from visiting a place. Well worth it once you’re there.
I suspect that in the future, people will regard some of us as being unbelievably hardy for sitting in cramped economy class for those 18-hour trips.
What did you do to prepare yourself? My knees ache just thinking about it.
@@n7y8c7 Like I was saying above, you just have to realize the length of the flight well in advance, treat it like sort of being in any other single place for a long time and plan things to keep yourself busy, and know that it’ll all be worth it to visit where you’re going. But I mean, nowadays you have a whole infotainment system in front of you with hundreds of things to choose from. And the lights are dim enough it’s not too difficult to sleep. Plus you’re served at least 3 meals on that flight. It’s a big plane too, so personally I like aisle seats so I can keep getting up to move around whenever I want. But ideally for a flight like that, I would LOVE to fly first class. If any s flight where that would feel great, it’s those. But unfortunately since that size plane has closed off sleeper “suites” for a lot of first class, and because of the distance, that class is prohibitively expensive for most people. I know I’ve never been able to fly anything but coach overseas.
@@cgimovieman Absolutely!
I've taken Delta One to Stuttgart and compared to the trip I had in economy before that to Amsterdam, the difference was night and day.
I barely slept, but I was definitely comfortable. I'd like to try the SkyCouch on Air New Zealand.
@@n7y8c7 Delta has long been my airline for decades as well. Although it was Northwest before Delta absorbed them years back now. New Zealand has been right at the top of my “to visit” list for a very long long time now. But despite travel being maybe my number one hobby, I just haven’t had the financial means to travel that far in quite a while. I used to get to travel for me work very frequently until about 2008/2009, but sadly my company downsized, I lost my job, and ever since then I’ve been on my own more or less for travel.
As an aviation geek, I enjoyed this! Please update it every so often! Thanks!
7:40 Istanbul also has a brand new huge airport, that probably is a reason why the city made a huge jump in the rankings.
9:45 Historically, another airline (AirBerlin) used to mainly fly out of Berlin, but those guys went defunct. Despite Berlin also having a big 'new' airport Lufthansa hasn't jumped onto it, and the carrier remains strong in the West German heartland where it started out. Germany also has a good internal rail network so there is less reason for Lufthansa to expand their hubs to more cities.
this is one of my favorite geography topics. love to look at those route maps. whenever I’m on a plane, that’s the first thing I go to in the back of the magazines (mot sure if they still have them though post-covid, haven’t flown yet).
I appreciated the little Steve Miller Band nod at the end of the video.
The newest startup Avelo is breaking trends, utilizing small airports as their bases and doing flights out and back (meaning the pilots and flight attendants get to go back home every night). They seem to be growing fast. I hope their trend-defying operations hold and they continue to grow!
It would be really concerning if a startup wasn’t growing. The thing if the connect smaller airports they can’t crack larger cities. Like Denver is a big city with one airport.
@@Speedster___ Fair point! They do fly to bigger airports Baltimore Washington International (BWI), Orlando (MCO), and Chicago Midway (MDW) but it would be nice if they would use those as connecting points instead of just flying out there and back to their small "base" airports (their hubs).
@@johnlundkeller the thing is they can become like a mid 2000s Southwest but Becuase of operational model they just can not fly into bigger airports. Like midway is big but it’s very clearly the secondary airport. BWI is kinda like that too with DC near.
Imo Avelo best expansion path is to find mid sized cities and then connect them to non regional big cities secondary airports.
One random example would be Midway to Tucson
So is breeze airlines, which is also doing very well right now. So many budget airlines are using this chance to improve hard and it's great to see. Always fun to walk through a small airport in a couple of minutes
@@Speedster___ JSX uses Rocky Mountain Metro. Way closer to Denver than DEN
I love that you have the _correct_ South Carolina license plate behind you
Kyle does it again, you dropped this, king 👑
Many of these hubs are ones inherited from Airlines they took over American got Philly, Phoenix and Charlotte when they bought out US Airways who in turn got Phoenix from America West and Charlotte from Piedmont.
SImilarly, Delta got Detroit and Minneapolis-St. Paul from Northwest.
Yet another fascinating topic I had no idea I was interested in! Thanks Kyle!
As an airline pilot (That big orange S, the hometown airline for Minneapolis)
this was an amazing video!
Great video! I'm an aviation geek and a geography nerd... this video was right up my ally! Keep up the great work!
Very cool to see the different flight maps next to eachnotbet
8:08 Delhi’s new international Terminal 3, as part of its expansion of the original airport in 2010, has allowed it to ramp up, so to speak, from being outside the 25 airports over the last dozen years to number 7 in the most recent poll.
Geography + aviation = nerd heaven. Great video! Thanks man
I spy a Primus album. 😊 I like to check out the albums, flags and little things behind you. Love your channel. Nerds rule!
Honorable mention of Allegiant
Very helpful, Mr. Kyle, gracias. I'll save this video to help me select airlines and more direct routes. However, I prefer to drive so I can see the places I used to fly over. Much more interesting.
Thanks for the video. I'd like to see more videos about geography in the aviation context. I know it's a stretch, but if you can I'd like to see it.
Great video. Living in Denver I can attest to the very busy airport.
Oh this is a really good one! I love travel maps. :) Great post!
The American legacy carriers (AA, DL, UA) are now a product of many mergers and acquisitions of airlines like Contential, Northwest, Eastern, America West, Western, TWA, and US Air. You can see those roots in the locations off some of their hubs. The hub locations are more a product of history than spacial practicality.
Yeah, Delta's hubs in Detroit and Minneapolis were originally Northwest hubs, as was their minor hub in Seattle.
Another fascinating presentation. Thanks, Kyle. Keep up the great work.
Thank you!
Many people are (correctly) pointing out that Lufthansa’s biggest hub is in Frankfurt because it was centrally located in West Germany, but everyone is forgetting one crucial detail. East Germany forbade any and all West German registered aircraft from flying over its airspace, effectively banning them from flying to Berlin; only aircraft registered in the United States, UK, and France were allowed to fly over their airspace. Hence why Pan Am and British Airways had vast networks of flying flights within Germany during the Cold War. Meanwhile West German airlines, including Lufthansa, did not even fly to Berlin until AFTER German reunification in 1990. Air Berlin, an airline based in Berlin we remember as German, was actually an American airline when it was founded and flew American registered aircraft until German reunification, when it ‘relocated’ to Germany.
Thank you so for this informative video. Doing research for transportation hub matrix, and your video helpful and educational.
Love to see this for trains as well. (Freight or Passenger)
Good Morning, Great weather here to get great video!! Thanks!
Following airlines, hubs, routes has always been a hobby of mine since I've been a kid. This video is very interesting. I'm not sure if it's a geography thing, but it is also interesting how each of these airlines acquired the hubs and focus cities they did. As well as some of the cities that used to be hubs but are not any longer. St. Louis for TWA/American. Memphis for Northwest/Delta. Cincinatti for Delta.
Kyle, every video you make is amazing. Thanks for the information!
Thank you!
Air Canada's hubs are also pretty simple - Vancouver for west coast and pacific, Toronto for east coast and atlantic.
Also WestJet is based in Calgary and basically is its only hub. It's also no longer a budget airline - it transitioned to becoming full service in like 2018.
Love this topic. Would have liked to hear any comments about how Alaska Airlines fits into the schemes you describe, given that it is also a top 5 carrier.
Yeah, I was hoping to learn more about southwest. Now I'm even more confused why you can't go to some cities via southwest if they don't rely on the "spoke" method like most.:-p
@@crabring I could be completely wrong, but I think it has to do, in part, with the expense of getting slots at large airports where legacy carriers have significant footprints. I’m pretty sure that was the case in the NYC metro area (where I grew up): for a long time, if you wanted to fly Southwest, you had to go to Philly or (I think) Islip, because the legacy carriers all had big presences at JFK, EWR, and LGA, though I think they now fly out of LGA, at least. I now live near BWI, which isn’t a hub for anyone, and where Southwest has something like an 85-90% market share.
I think Alaska has a good footing in the up-and-down the coast market. Seattle and Portland are pretty far out of the way with no major population centers anywhere near, so the larger airlines tend to not fly those routes. But for Alaska they basically have cornered a market left relatively untapped. We flew with them from Fresno to Cabo San Lucas in Baja California.
Interesting video, Kyle. Istanbul airport is gigantic!!! Pretty cool stuff.
I think Delta’s acquisition of northwest explains its Detroit and Minneapolis hubs…
A little flying humor here from a OKC comedian (not me). Oklahoma City's airports are Wiley Post for their regional airport and the late great humorist Will Rodgers for their internationalairport. Wiley Post was Will Rodgers personal pilot and they perished in the same plane crash.....
I love this channel! Very interesting stuff
Correction for Lufthansa, it’s more simple than you think, the airport in Berlin is smaller than Frankfurt and it took them so long to replace it after the Cold War and reunification of Germany. So Frankfurt airport has always been the hub for Lufthansa, also nowadays Munich has become a hub for Lufthansa as well and it’s the main hub for Lufthansa’s both the airbus a350 and soon a380 flights, meanwhile Frankfurt is the main hub for the Airbus a340, Boeing 787 and 747 flights
Atlanta is the busiest hub in the world because of its location. It can reach 2/3 of the US population within a two hour flight. That’s something NY, LA, Chicago and Dallas can’t do.
"When I die, whether I'm going to heaven or hell, I've gotta change planes in Atlanta!"
Always a good day when a new Geography King video is posted! Hope you had fun on your recent trip 👍
Airport hub history:
Seattle: Was a large base for Northwest (merged with Delta). They used to work with Alaska for the local stuff but DL and AS had a falling out after the merger.
SLC: Originally a hub for Western Airlines (merged with Delta)
PHX: Hub for America West who later bought USAirways but kept the latter name. USAirways then bought American and again kept the latter name.
MSP: Northwest hub before merger with Delta
DTW: North Central hub before they merged with Southern to form Republic which later merged with Northwest
IAH: Continental hub due in part to their history with Texas International. Became a United hub when CO and UA merged.
Newark: Was the hub of PeoplExpress before Continental bought them in 1987. Before PE, Newark was a fairly quiet and empty place. CO grew the place using a new terminal (C) PE had designed and started construction on. United got it in the merger with CO and this is why they don’t find JFK worth serving despite trying again to do so recently.
Both AA and UA have hubs in Texas and O’Hare. Southwest is a Texas airline that grew to have a major operation at Chicago-Midway, and even helped getting the new, much larger, terminal built there. I don’t see how any decline in Chicago or Illinois has any relevance to the fates of those three airlines.
I used to fly to St. Louis from Little Rock a lot on Southwest in 2005 because Busch Stadium 2 was being demolished once the season ended. I loved it. Soon as I got off the plane, I would take the MetroLink directly into Downtown and get off at the Stadium exit. Great times!
Growing up in Pittsburgh, USAirways/USAir used in Greater Pittsburgh Airport as its hub. You could get a non-stop flight to almost anywhere in the US from Pittsburgh
Interesting, earned a lot of new things I'd not really thought about.
United hubs cover every region of the US and pretty much EVERY major business center in the country.
Easily the BEST in the US.
UA can get you ANYWHERE in the world from their hubs non-stop or one stop at the least.
20+ year veteran of the industry.
Denver to Frankfurt... Lufthansa 774/775 and only on Saturday... made the trip a few times for work.
Lol Spokane being labeled Lilac City made me smile
Thank you so much for your video. Back in 1989 I worked for an air freight company and I would fly from San Francisco to Tokyo and then to Hong Kong and spend a day in Hong Kong and back to Tokyo and then back to San Francisco twice a week. It was so fun for a while but I got burnt out and had to give it up. Well I’ll be looking for your next video 👍🌎
Delta's map has changed the most. They used to have CVG and DFW, now they're stronger across the northern tier (DTW, MSP, SEA, BOS). American have the best combination of hubs across the sun belt now. United have the best set up for international travel and premium-paying business travelers.
I am an airline worked and I loved this video!
Flights between LAX and Dubai always travel east. If you do a round trip between these cities, you’ll fly through every major time zone.
MSP as a Delta hub is at least in part a legacy of it having been the base and headquarters for Northwest Airlines, which was swallowed up by Delta. Before the hub-and-spoke era, MSP was a small-ish airport and not a major transfer point.
Awesome video and it's awesome living in a city that is an airline hub, Phoenix!
I was reluctant to click on this link, but I should rely on your judgement... these maps are fabulous! Very nice. Thank you.
As an avgeek I absolutely love this one. Great vid as per usual.
It you count Chicago Ohare and Chicago Midway together it would be larger than cities with one airport like Atlanta, Denver and Dallas
Dallas has two! DFW and DAL Love Field.
Gking, we don't want to get caught up with this funky "kicks" going down in the city!
As for frankfurt, Im quite certain the 2 biggest reasons are 1. Located in west germany, 2. Economic capital of germany, a much more financial and business oriented city so just a lot more business traffic, as well as being closer situated to the Ruhr with fast train connections.
I have watched and enjoyed a lot of your videos, including this very interesting one. Thank you Kyle!
The airline industry was hugely impacted by the recent pandemic. And now for some older history about a former airline that was the world’s leading airline from the late 40’s through the 70s: Pan American World Airways.
In 1947, Pan Am began the first regularly scheduled around-the-world passenger service using using Lockheed Constellations (a propeller-driven, four-engine pressurized-cabin civil airliner built from 1943 to 1958). Pan American Flight 001 originated in San Francisco and flew westward to Honolulu, on across the Pacific to Hong Kong, and continued around the world to Bangkok (Thailand), Delhi (India), Beirut (Lebanon), Istanbul (Turkey), Frankfurt (Germany), London (England) and finally to New York. The entire flight took about 48 hours. Its counterpart, Pan Am Flight 002, originated in New York and flew eastward around the world to the same cities. [Information from WIRED and Wikipedia articles.]
In the summer of 1972, my wife and flew on Pan Am Flight 002 halfway around its global route, flying on a Boeing 747 from JFK in New York to London, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Karachi (Pakistan) and New Delhi. We returned a month later on Pan Am Flight 001 from New Delhi, to Beirut, Frankfort, London, to New York with breakfast served after each stop (as I recall). We got in very late to JFK and slept in the airport. We were both 20 then. It was overall, an amazing adventure!
Good video. American is the largest airline in the world because of a merger they had with Northwest, nothing really to do with their hub locations. Side note: Once I heard “North America “, I knew he was Canadian because Americans never say “North America”..idk why that is. For instance, if there is a building that’s the tallest in all of North America but it’s located in Chicago Americans will just say it’s the “tallest building in the U.S.” without any mention of North America whatsoever, however, say the tallest building in North America was hypothetically placed in Montreal, Canadians would then say it’s the “tallest building in North America.”
I got that Steve Miller band reference in the end🤘
Chicago as a hub has a major drawback in winter: terrible weather.
American Airlines' Caribbean hub was San Juan, P.R. But due to the ineptitude of the island's government, American moved the hub to Miami.
The SW Airlines map at 5:47 has an odd way of naming a few cities. Specifically Lilac City instead of Spokane, Mile High City instead of Denver, and Big Apple and New Ark.
I don't think it's an official SWA map.
Spokane has the nickname of "Lilac City"
Nice South Carolina license plate. Looks a lot better than the ones we are stuck with now. Great job on all the videos. Appreciate the info. Keep up the good work.
Southwest is a perfect airline for airports like where I live in in Albany NY. Smaller airport, smaller city, but with tons of people interested in traveling to bigger cities without having to go all the way to NYC first
Nice song reference there at the end.
I noticed the Easter eggs on Southwest's map... Big Apple, Mile High City and Lilac City. They stuck out because I watched the "nickname" video yesterday lol.
The recent growth of Turkish Air is probably been helped by the massive new Istanbul Airport opened in 2018 designed to handle being a top Europe-Asia hub.
Every time I hear Lufthansa, I think about Goodfellas!
Who else does the opening whoosh sound when Geography King videos come on? Haha, I'm weird, I guess.
During the cold war, German airlines were prohibited from flying to Berlin -- only the airlines from the four occupying powers could fly there. Thus, Lufthansa built a hub at Frankfurt, which was near the middle West Germany (at least north to south) and reasonably close to the capital, which was Bonn.
Part of the reason for Istanbul is that it is a new airport which just opened in 2019 which has much larger capacity than the old Istanbul airport.
Currently in flight training. This is my dream fuel. Nice channel!
Love this video and channel! Great shirt btw!
Thank you!
Thanks for this video! Well formatted with good information.
I think whether they draw the route as "east" or "west" on those super long routes is really the same thing. The plane would actually just fly north, over the pole, and then south down the other side. It just looks "east" or "west" on the flat map.
You were incorrect, American Airlines home is not Dallas, Its' corporate home is Fort Worth; Southwest's home is Dallas.
That was really interesting!!
I approve and I am interested in learning more about geography from a nerdy perspective
The Chicago metro population has continued upward over many years. The city itself has declined, but suburban growth more than makes up for that. The real issue with O'Hare is that there is no room for expansion since the airport is well within the city limits.
Air New Zealand used to be the last company to fly around the world. You could fly from Auckland to Asia to London, then London to Los Angeles to Auckland. Not sure if that will return