Airlines’ `spoke and choke’

Since the advent of airline deregulation, the airlines

have been allowed to redesign American aviation. What they have come up with is called the spoke and hub, or as I like to say, “the spoke and choke system.”

If you look at the design of this system, what it most resembles is an hourglass. Lots and lots of small grains of sand come together, funneling through a small opening and then spreading back out over a large area. Since only a limited number of airplanes can pass through the hub (choke point) at one time, only the most profitable routes are given preference.

One of the legitimate purposes of the airline is profit. No profit, no money to run the airline, results in no airline. However, unlike the manufacture of widgets, the airlines also have a national and social purpose and responsibility. When the maximizing of profits becomes paramount, the public pays a serious price. Put another way, small town and rural areas with their limited populations have been pushed out of the age of aviation and back to the age of depending on the internal combustion engine and a system of highways and bridges.

What’s the big deal, you might ask, people always had to drive to get to an airport. That is true, only now, when someone from a smaller population area drives to a local airport, he or she finds

the local carrier can only get slots for one or maybe two flights a day into the hub. Some more rural airports offer only one flight two or three times a week. The reverse is also true. People coming from major hubs and trying to get to any of these smaller airports also have a restricted choice of times and destinations.

I have twice in the last year made reservations to fly to Philadelphia to visit family. On both occasions, I made reservations months in advance to take advantage of the least expensive fares, which were still more than it would have cost me to fly to Europe or California. In each case, I first would have to drive 125 miles from Eastport to Bangor International Airport, then board a plane for Boston where I would change planes; in one case I flew directly to Philadelphia and the other, I first flew to Newark and then on to Philadelphia. In both cases, because of a limited local schedule and weather and delays along the route, it would have required I spend the night in either Boston or Newark. I finally drove to Philadelphia.

In this age of space stations and supersonic jets, I am going to have to wait for the, “Star Trek transporter” if I don’t want to drive. In the Northeast, all the major hubs are located in our major population centers, the two biggest being Boston and New York. Both of these hubs are located on the North Atlantic coast. If I were an enemy of the United States given the task of trying to sabotage American aviation, these are the same spots I would choose to cause the maximum damage. This is based on a long history of flying the Northeast corridor both as a passenger and as a pilot. Frequent severe weather at a spoke only causes local disruption. But frequent severe weather at a major hub disrupts the entire system. When you have a major delay at one of these hubs and your area has only a few flights into and out of the hub, you are reduced to that New England adage, “You can’t get there from here.”

There is also a social and economic price to be paid by the average citizen. In the major hubs, there is the added noise, congestion, pollution and stress and expense of maintaining an ever-expanding airport that encroaches on neighborhoods in every direction. Rural areas in need of new business, despite low taxes, low crime, availability of space and good neighborhoods, lack sufficient reliable rapid transportation. No matter how good the World Wide Web gets, it can’t carry your package or executive to a client, or a sample to your office.

We know the hub and spoke system works well at meeting the needs of the major airlines’ bottom lines, but how well does it work at meeting the needs of the general public, understanding that any disruption at a major hub disrupts air traffic all along the entire Northeast corridor? If you look at the number of days a year Boston and New York, because of their proximity to the ocean, experience high winds, thunderstorms, ocean fog, heavy snow and icing conditions, it is not an insignificant amount. Before, the hub and spoke system was only an inconvenience to people going to and from these airports and to some international travelers. It was not the disaster to East Coast flights that it is today.

While it is probably not possible to go back to the days before the hourglass model was adopted, there are a couple of things that would help. First, since each hub is limited in the number of planes it can handle, we should establish a large number of hubs spread around the country in a pattern that best serves the public. Second, we should insist any major hub airport be located at least 50 miles inland from the ocean. While certainly not a panacea, it would reduce the disruptions caused by locating hubs where they are at the mercy of the weather along the coastal regions of the North Atlantic Ocean.

Harold I. Goodman lives in Eastport.