Is it the airport that has the largest passenger volume and serves as a hub?
Is it the airport that has the greatest number of carriers that use it as a hub?
Or is it the airport with the largest terminal building that serves as a hub?
Maybe it’s the airport used as a hub that has the most (or longest) runways??
“Biggest” has a broad scope of meanings. By getting the question straight, we may get correct answers.
I mean the biggest airline operations, not biggest airports. DL has a huge operation at ATL. They have the biggest operation at a hub of any airline. My question is. who has the next biggest operations.
Southwest Airlines' Top Ten Airports: (as of April 19, 2007)
Cities Daily Departures Number of Gates N/S Cities Served
Las Vegas 231 21 53
Chicago MDW 223 29 47
Phoenix 206 24 42
BWI 178 26 39
Oakland 142 11 20
...
...
COMBINED??
1 dl at atl
2 aa at dfw
3 co at houston
4 ua at ord
5 aa at ord
6 nwa at msp
7 nwa at dtw
8 ual at denver
9 co at newark
10 dl at salt lake city
Dami must be enjoying the company of his woman this weekend. You would think that someone that mentions “SWA” and “hub” in the same sentence would set off his damisenses and have him running to the nearest computer.
Unfortunately, I was away for the weekend placing my grandmother in a rest home or else I would have said “SOUTHWEST - THEY DON’T DO NO STINKIN’ HUBS.”
Dallas is the second largest hub operation in the US with AA’s 850+ daily flights. Northwest at Minneapolis is next, with ~700 daily flights. Then Charlotte with close to 600 daily flights on US Airways. Houston/CO and Detroit/NW are both around ~500 daily flights. Not sure which one is larger.
ORD has two majors hbbing there… ual and aa. and given runway costraints it was the biggest as for passengers and flights a few years ago. ATL now has that record for now. Also ORD was the only airport hubbing for two majors… now you have TRANS AIR growing out of ATL which would give ATL a second major and you have PHX where Southwest has a hub and US AIR and it’s merger with America West . Once upon atime DL had a big hub at DFW but they scaled back … P.S. no Southwest Hubs… wrong… although they say not… how did MDW And LAS grow… direct flights and transfers to further destinations… o.k. not true hubbing… but it’s hubbing…
Not true. ORD is STILL (not “was”) a hub for two airlines.
Denver was a hub for both Continental and United, although the former no longer has a hub there.
Memphis is also a hub to two major airlines: Northwest and FedEx.
Other hubs that are rarely mentioned due to the “an airline must carry passengers” mentality are Oakland (FedEx), Ontario (UPS), and Anchorage (FedEx and UPS).
Even if an airline operates over a 100 flights a day to a given airport, as Southwest does for several airports, you cannot consider that airport to be a hub unless there is concentrated effort to arrange the flights in such as way that passengers can connect easily. In Southwest’s case, they do not have hubs but, due to the large number of flights, they have many connecting opportunities.
You are forgetting UPS (5X) in KSDF. That is their main hub, larger than Ontario and Anchorage. UPS also has significant hub activity in KPHL, many of the TATL flights leave from there…