The traffic shares of the ten and the twenty busiest airports have barely moved in three decades, and the share of routes touching a large hub ends about where it began, with no trend the data can confirm.
What this shows: The chart covers 1990 to 2024. It plots Top 10 airport share (%), Top 20 airport share (%) and Hub-connected routes (%) on a vertical axis of Percentage. Latest values: Top 10 airport share (%) 16.2; Top 20 airport share (%) 27.3; Hub-connected routes (%) 65.4. Data run through 2024.
Conditions and method
Hub-connected share counts the routes with a large hub at either end. Each year’s large hubs are the airports in the large tier of that year’s passengers, 28 to 34 airports a year. The share’s largest one-year move is 6.2 points, from 75.1% in 2001 to 68.9% in 2002. No trend is claimed from the share. Its level is not shown to settle around a trend, and its year-to-year changes average -0.05 points, which a test does not distinguish from zero.