Virtual Hubs: An Airline Schedule Recovery Concept and Model

Inclement weather at an airline's hub airport can be devastating to that airline's schedule. The repercussions resonate throughout the airline's network as capacity is reduced, connections are missed, and passengers are delayed on a larger scale than during irregular operations at a spoke airport. The main hypothesis behind the work presented in this thesis is that by shifting a small fraction of a connecting bank to strategically located, under-utilized airports during irregular operations, an airline can reduce costs and aircraft delays relative to current industry rescheduling practices. These proposed "virtual hubs" would, in addition to hosting selected connecting traffic that is shifted from the original hub in order to maximize passenger flow through the network, also reduce the demand on the nominal hub airport. The primary goal of this research project was to develop methods for the implementation of a virtual hub network and evaluate the potential benefits to the airline industry. To that end, a mathematical formulation is presented along with a case study of the benefits of a virtual hub to a major US airline. The actual recovered schedule and delay statistics for a day of irregular operations was compared to the results from the virtual hub network. Results indicate that significant passenger delays are reduced 94% and flight cancellations are reduced by 15% when a virtual hub network is implemented. Thesis Supervisor: John-Paul B. Clarke Title: Associate Professor Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics