jabird,
In a previous life I was in TSR on a number of occasions on 'Carpatair' business and TSR is most definately a hub operation and Carpatair personnel even refer to each, morning and afternoon, turnaround of the fleet as "the hub".
Each night the fleet overnights at these regional airports and each morning descends upon TSR where the punters all play musical aeroplanes before the fleet then head off to their 'western' destinations before a reverse of this said operation takes place each afternoon before the fleet head off for another night in the 'outback'.
To see their, then, fleet of something like 13 S2000's to, particularly, arrive TSR as if they are a squadron is quite something to see, I've ridden the jump seat in to TSR, TSR doesn't have radar and with something like 13 PDQ inbounds ATC just do the radio whilst the fleet maintain their own 3 minutes seperation which is just enough time for each aircraft to land then backtrack the runway and vacate before the next one lands etc.
I've also stood in the TSR terminal more times than I care to remember and not so many passengers join at TSR, it's mainly a hub operation.
And not forgetting the
Moldavian Airlines Home Page side of the Carpatair operation!
But ..... correct me if I am wrong but didn't Lufthansa build the DUS hub on sub 150 seaters and it is only through popularity that 150+ seaters may now be part of the DUS hub?
I would often be transitting thru DUS and I recall it being, pretty much, LH CRJ's, 146's & ATR's with just an odd B737 or similar ... to travel all the way BHX/KBP/BHX on 50 seater pocket rockets was quite an experience.
P.S. I don't believe Carpatair have ever operated a UK schedule as UK is beyond the effective range of a S2000 and, more recently, perhaps, a Fokker is too large for such a route. They tried S2000's to/from CDG, a long way in a Saab and, quite often, they found themselves utilizing a F100 (they didn't have F70's at the time) on the route but for S2000 loads!