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Aviation glossary

Hub

Also: hub airport, connecting hub, airline hub

Airlines and business

Airport where an airline concentrates its flights and times its schedule so that passengers and cargo from many cities can connect with one another.

What it is

At a hub, an airline schedules arrivals and departures in waves, or banks: many flights land within a short window, passengers change aircraft, and soon afterwards another wave departs for different destinations. A relatively small number of routes can thus offer a very large number of origin and destination pairs.

The hub is usually the airline's main base, where it keeps its maintenance facilities, crews and much of its fleet. Examples include Atlanta for Delta, Frankfurt for Lufthansa, Dubai for Emirates and Panama City for Copa Airlines.

One airport can be a hub for several airlines, and a single airline may run more than one hub.

On Vuelopedia

Vuelopedia's airport pages list, where data is available, the airlines that fly there and the destinations they serve.

Delta Air Lines Copa Airlines Airports

Related terms

Hub-and-spokeWay of organising an airline network in which most flights start or end at a central airport, where passengers change to reach their destination. Point-to-pointNetwork model in which an airline flies directly between the cities it serves, rather than funnelling connections through a central hub airport. Coordinated airportAirport where capacity falls short of demand, so landing or taking off there requires a slot allocated by an independent coordinator. SlotPermission to land or take off at a congested airport on a given date and time, or a departure time allocated to manage the flow of air traffic.
Whole glossary

Cite

To cite this page in academic work, an article or Wikipedia, choose the style and copy the reference. The access date is today.

This page was last updated on October 9, 2026

APA

Vuelopedia. (2026, October 9). Hub. Retrieved October 17, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/hub

MLA

“Hub.” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 9 Oct. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/hub. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Chicago

Vuelopedia. “Hub.” Fundación Poderia. Last modified October 9, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/hub.

Harvard

Vuelopedia (2026) Hub. Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/hub (Accessed: 17 October 2026).

BibTeX

@misc{vuelopedia_en_glossary_hub,
  author       = {{Vuelopedia}},
  title        = {{Hub}},
  publisher    = {Fundación Poderia},
  year         = {2026},
  date         = {2026-10-09},
  url          = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/hub},
  howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/hub}},
  urldate      = {2026-10-17},
  note         = {Accessed 2026-10-17}
}

Wikipedia

{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/hub |title=Hub |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-10-09 |access-date=2026-10-17 |language=en}}

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