* * * * *
                                        
                                  Connections
                                        
> Mayer and Sinai's study also identified the real culprit: the deliberate
> overscheduling of flights at peak periods by major airlines trying to
> increase the amount of connecting traffic at their hub airports. Major
> airlines like United, Delta, and American use a hub-and-spoke model as a
> way to offer consumers more flight choices and to save money by
> centralizing operations. Most of the traffic they send through a hub is on
> the way to somewhere else. (Low-cost carriers, on the other hand, typically
> carry passengers from one point to another without offering many
> connections.)
> 

Via Jason Kottke [1], “Tragedy of the Airport: Why you get stuck for hours at
O'Hare [2]”

Hoade and I flew Northwest Airlines [3] to Las Vegas, with a conection in
Detroit—Detroit being a major (if not the major) hub for Northwestern, and
the terminal is huge—so huge that it has light rail running from one end of
the terminal to the other.

> THOUGHT: Airlines will always fly you through a connection flight.
> 
> “notes taken during the trip”
> 

I'm convinced that had I decided to fly Northwestern to Detroit, I would have
a connecting flight through Atlanta. Airlines seem incapable of flying one
directly to a destination.

[1] http://www.kottke.org/remainder/05/07/9032.html
[2] http://slate.msn.com/id/2123240
[3] http://www.nwa.com/

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

.