Airports - March April 2015

AIRPORT ANALYSIS
DUAL HUBS
Varadero, Puerto Plata, Punta Cana, Fort
Myers – all in the Caribbean – as well
as Djerba, Florence, Ibiza, Lanzarote,
Marrakech, Marsa Alam, Miami, Naples,
Olbia and Sylt). From Berlin, the carrier
connects to several Northern European
cities, such as Gothenburg, Bergen,
Helsinki, Oslo and Stockholm, as well as
Eastern European destinations including
Bucharest, Budapest, Gdansk, Kaliningrad,
Kraków, St Petersburg, Sofia and Warsaw.
It makes TXL the airline’s hub focusing
on Northern and Eastern Europe. Unlike
DUS, Berlin also has direct flights to
Chicago, Miami, Paris/Orly and Rome,
as well as domestic destinations such
as Saarbrücken, Karlsruhe, Cologne,
Frankfurt and Nuremberg.
Air France and Dutch flag carrier KLM
merged in 2004, although both retain
their individual identities. Traffic is
concentrated on the airlines’ respective
hubs at Paris/Charles de Gaulle (CDG) and
Amsterdam/Schiphol (AMS). The case of
Air France-KLM is special because it is not
so much one airline serving two hubs, but
a double airline with one hub each. KLM
serves some destinations from AMS that
the larger hub at CDG does not. If you
want to travel to secondary cities in East
Asia such as Hangzhou, Xiamen, Taipei,
Chengdu, Manila or Fukuoka on the Air
France-KLM network, you will be routed
via AMS, since Air France does not offer
any of these destinations through its Paris
hub. The same is true for Norwegian
cities such as Bergen, Stavanger and
Oslo and the Danish cities of Aalborg
and Billund. Together with Helsinki and
Gothenburg, this makes Amsterdam the
Nordic and Scandinavian hub for the
two-airline-group.
The important oil and gas industry
generates a considerable number of
flights to the Scottish cities of Aberdeen,
Glasgow and Edinburgh. All are served
direct from AMS, but not CDG. Other
exclusive destinations from AMS include:
Abu Dhabi, Accra, Almaty, Aruba, Bahrain,
Bonaire, Calgary, Cali Cape Town, Chicago,
Curaçao, Damman, Dar es Salaam, Bali,
Doha, Entebbe, Guayaquil, Havana, Kigali,
Kilimanjaro, Kuwait, Lagos, Muscat,
Nairobi, Paramaribo, Quito and Vancouver.
Air France offers many non-stop
connections to sub-Saharan Africa
that Amsterdam does not, including to
Abidjan, Abuja, Antananarivo, Bamako,
Bangui, Brazzaville, Conakry, Cotonou,
Dakar, Djibouti, Douala, Freetown,
Kinshasa, Lagos, Libreville, Lomé,
Malabo, Monrovia, N’djamena, Niamey,
Nouakchott, Ouagadougou, Port Harcourt
and Yaoundé. In Latin America, Havana,
Brasilia, Caracas and Montevideo are only
connected with CDG. In East Asia this is
true for Guangzhou, Ho Chi Minh City,
Tokyo/Haneda and Wuhan. In both France
and the Netherlands the vast majority
of domestic services route passengers
through their respective hubs, meaning
for some passengers two flights can
be required before joining a long-haul
connection.
In Southern Europe Alitalia has struggled
in recent years, both financially and
against increasing competition from LCCs.
Although no longer considered one of
the largest European carriers, it still has
three hubs. Milan/Linate, mostly serves
domestic destinations but also connects
with Amsterdam, Barcelona, Brussels,
Bucharest, London, Paris and Warsaw. All
of these cities are also served from the
China Southern
Airlines Boeing
737-81B B-2695
(c/n 32923) shares
the apron with
Airbus A320 Family
aircraft at Shanghai/
Pudong Airport in
December 2012.
(AirTeamImages.
com/Dave Sturges)
Oslo/
Gardermoen
is one of three
Scandinavian hubs
used by SAS. It is
also of increasing
importance to
resident carrier
Norwegian
Air Shuttle.
(AirTeamImages.
com/Jorgen
Syversen)
main hub in Rome/Fiumicino. However,
people living in the wealthy north of Italy
do not enjoy going south to the capital
to then ‘backtrack’ north. Consequently,
Milan/Malpensa offers a rather eclectic
mix of Alitalia long-haul destinations,
including Moscow, New York, Tokyo and
Tunis, but no European connections and
only one domestic route to Rome.
In Northern Europe, Scandinavian
Airlines (SAS) is another multi-hub carrier.
The tri-national airline had three bases
– in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo
– from its outset and thus manages a
‘triple-hub’. These heavily compete with
one another. Today Copenhagen (CPH) is
the most important of the three for SAS
(even though the airline is headquartered
in Sweden), mainly because it is furthest
south and thus closer to the rest of
Europe. The Danish capital has a few
world-city connections that Oslo and
Stockholm do not. Most noticeable are the
long-haul destinations of San Francisco,
Shanghai, Tokyo, Washington and Beijing,
although some smaller German and Polish
cities are exclusively served through
CPH by SAS, such as Bremen, Hannover
and Stuttgart in Germany and Warsaw,
Wroclaw and Poznan in Poland. Other
‘exclusive’ SAS destinations reachable
from CPH are Athens, Bologna, Bucharest,
Budapest, Leeds/Bradford, Luxembourg,
Newcastle, Palanga, Pristina, Tel Aviv and
Venice. Oslo (OSL) is the only SAS hub
to have direct flights to Chania, Gran
Canaria, Nice, Prague, Reykjavík and
Alanya. Stockholm is the only SAS hub
that does not serve any destination the
other two do not.
Straddling the Euro-Asia border, Turkey’s
busiest airport is Istanbul/Atatürk, the
primary hub for the rapidly expanding
Turkish Airlines. Istanbul’s second airport,
Sabiha Gökçen, is rapidly catching up and
already offers flights to Amsterdam, Baku,
Berlin, Brussels, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt,
Kiev, Kuwait, London, Milan, Münich,
Paris, Tehran, Tel Aviv, Tbilisi, Sarajevo
and Vienna. Across both facilities
Turkish Airlines flies to 218 international
destinations in 107 countries, making it
one of the most geographically varied air
carriers in the world. It connects to 100
European destinations, 66 in Asia and
42 in Africa.
Asia/Pacific
In China three major airline groups
compete for the millions of customers.
All run more than one hub – in most cases
this is a necessity due to the vast size of
the country. China Southern (CS) serves
193 destinations in 35 countries from its
hubs at Beijing, Guangzhou, Chongqing
and Ürümqi. The carrier has 485 flights a
day from Guangzhou and 221 from Beijing.
The main hub is connected to a plethora
of Asian destinations as well as Frankfurt,
San Francisco, Amsterdam, Auckland,
London, Paris, Vancouver, Moscow,
New York and Los Angeles. The four
big Australian cities (Melbourne, Perth,
Sydney and Brisbane) are also directly
www.airportsworld.com 49