Originally Posted by
jabird
Would anyone like to help me settle a score?
A senior executive in the UK aviation industry claimed that Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport, is "not a hub airport".
Correct. It may be a major centre of operations, particularly for BA, but a hub is an operation designed around substantial transfers of passengers from inbound to outbound. It is the opposite of O&D traffic. Now Heathrow has huge O&D traffic, but as far as transfers go it is a very poor effort, with seemingly little serious effort put into them. The domestic flights to Edinburgh etc are most certainly not scheduled specifically to offer connections; those that do exist are a chance.
It's the same at say London Waterloo train station, the busiest in the UK but not a hub, as very few people change trains there; everyone else arrives/leaves by other means.
On that basis (thanks PF) - Timisoara in Romania is a hub as, despite its relatively small size, Carpatair use it to provide transfers between various niche airports.
Correct again. In fact it's a perfect little example of this.
On an even smaller level, St Martin, much loved by spotters for its over-beach landings, is also a hub, as Winair bring people in and out from numerous other nearby islands using the legendary Twotters.
Not really, as Winair are not particularly integrated with those other airlines; it's a separate operation.
Apparently, it fails to meet such a definition because it does not operate the same system of in and outbound flight banks that is used, for example, at CDG.
I've never particularly noticed CDG as running flight banks. And again, in my experience the vast majority of its pax leave the airport by other means.