JKIA in Nairobi: African countries expanding their airports should plan for dry days when flights change routes, for example. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
In general, people would prefer point-to-point travel. They travel for a shorter time, there is less chance of losing luggage among other advantages.
Nairobi for a long time has been a centralised city. Pretty much any service that needed to be done required a trip to the city centre. As a result, the transport industry developed to mirror this state of affairs especially after the collapse of the Kenya Bus Service.
Matatus from virtually all sections of the city deposit and pick passengers from the city centre. This is the classic hub and spoke transport model.
On the other side of the scale as new roads are constructed, enterprising Kenyans have realised that their is no need for example for someone who wants to move from Karen to Bomas to go all the way to the city centre.
So they have positioned vehicles that allow you to go directly to your destination. This is the point-to-point system.
The airline industry is similar in that both models exist. In general, people would prefer point-to-point travel. They travel for a shorIn general, people would prefer point-to-point travel. They travel for a shorter time, there is less chance of losing luggage among other advantages. ter time, there is less chance of losing luggage among other advantages.
To reflect this preference, airlines charge higher fees for direct flights. However, not every route has the traffic necessary to sustain the plan.
In any case, to serve each and every city pair with direct flights would require many planes. This is to say nothing about all the crewing headaches and other operational difficulties that this poses to an airline.
It is for this reason that even low-cost carriers in Europe have multiple bases rather than operating a true point-to-point network.
Despite the fact that travelling to hub often means longer flight times, long layovers at airports, it tends to be cheaper. This is because operating to hub improves economies of scale.
The hubs themselves tend to reap the benefit of much higher transit passenger numbers which can be a source of revenue for the city concerned.
To take advantage of these opportunities, various countries have built airports with the aim of getting a piece of the global air traffic market. Some like the middle eastern countries have been successful.
Unfortunately when the airlines that use an airport as a hub collapse or choose different hubs, that country’s government can end up with a white elephant.
This, especially, tends to happen in the United States when airlines merge and have to close down bases.
Transit hub money
In one extreme example, Pittsburgh International Airport passenger numbers dropped from 21 million to eight million when US Airways reduced its operations there. They were forced to build walls to prevent passengers from seeing abandoned concourses.
This is a lesson that many African countries building huge airports for the easy transit hub money should learn. If the airlines that are expected to use that hub collapse, it is unlikely that the cost of building the facilities will ever be recouped.
Dr Ondieki is a pilot with an international airline.
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