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MMMondayMemo: What is an Airline Hub?
Each Monday Miles has decided to drop a tip, hint, tutorial, trick that maybe you’ve missed or haven’t heard before. If you’re an expert in this field, some of these may be things you already know, but there are a lot of beginners out there who are just getting their feet wet. Last week we talked about Positioning to Hubs so that your odds of landing that KILLER BUSINESS CLASS flight increases, but Miles realized that we may need to describe Airlines hubs too. So what is an airline hub?
As defined by Wikipedia:
Airline hubs or hub airports are used by one or more airliners to concentrate passenger traffic and flight operations at a given airport. They serve as transfer (or stop-over) points to get passengers to their final destination. It is part of the hub-and-spoke system. An airline operates flights from several non-hub (spoke) cities to the hub airport, and passengers traveling between spoke cities need to connect through the hub.
Simply put, the term Hub comes from a wheel’s Hub and Spoke setup
Airlines use this model to create more efficiency and consistency while broadening the map of service for an airline. You could also call this Usage and Load. It started happening after the airlines deregulated. Know who experimented first?
Examples of Hubs? Here’s a map from Google that shows some
Did you know that Delta was the first American airline to experiment with hubs? It was Atlanta – which has been the busiest airport by passenger traffic since 2000.
You can often find International planes positioning between Hubs. This creates a great opportunity to fly an incredible Business Class product for the price of coach. I did this from Chicago to LA last fall ( Two American Hubs).
Because Hubs have a large amount of traffic they create better opportunities for award redemption. We spoke of using a positioning flight to accomplish this last week. We positioned to Boston to redeem Alaska Miles for flight to Beijing on Cathay Pacific where my mom got a birthday cake. She was sort of surprised 😉
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
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