Airport capacity expansion strategies in the era of airline multi-hub networks

Many major airports are hubs for network carriers at the same time as serving a large local market. The complementarity between these functions is often seen as a prerequisite for viable hub operations, suggesting that spreading the hub network over multiple airports can be very costly and damages the corner stone of the hub operation: the creation of scope and density economies. The objective of this paper is to add to the understanding of the network strategies followed by (multi)hub network carriers and to draw conclusions from this understanding for the capacity expansion strategies of airports, in particular for the London Metropolitan Area