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

Low frequencies of aircraft may have substantial negative effects on schedu ling costs and waiting costs at hub airports. Appropriate timetabling of ca rriers 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 a irports such as London Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle have longer wai ting 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 de veloped in this paper. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.