Measuring airline hub timetable co-ordination and connectivity: definition of a new index and application to a sample of European hubs

In this paper a new index for measuring the timetable co-ordination of an airline hub is proposed, with application to a sample of European hubs. This index is both quite accurate and easy to use, so that it may prove a useful schedule analysis tool for airline managers. In section 1 of this paper, the definition of ‘wave-system structure’ and ‘ideal wave’ is given. In section 2 the problem of measuring hub connectivity and hub timetable co-ordination is discussed. Then, both the so-called ‘weighted indirect connection number’, which is an index for measuring hub connectivity, and the ‘connectivity ratio’, which is an index for measuring hub timetable co-ordination, are described, in section 3 and 4 respectively. In section 5, a new index for measuring hub timetable co-ordination is illustrated: the ‘weighted connectivity ratio’. Some examples of hub timetable co-ordination measures performed with the new index are reported in section 6.