Quality of hub-and-spoke networks; the effects of time-table co-ordination on waiting time and rescheduling time

Low frequencies of aircraft may have substantial negative effects on scheduling costs and waiting costs at hub airports. Appropriate timetabling of carriers will reduce these costs. In this paper we propose a measure for the quality of the co-ordination of timetables by carriers in hub airports. An application is given for four large European airports. We find that large airports such as London Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle have longer waiting times than the smaller airports Frankfurt and Schiphol even though one would expect shorter waiting times given the higher frequencies of service. The reason is that the flight co-ordination is less efficient and this is clearly reflected by the values of the flight co-ordination coefficient developed in this paper. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.