Point-to-point routes jump in the early two-thousands, when smaller carriers were brought into the data, so part of that rise is coverage. Since then point-to-point counts have thinned while hub-and-spoke counts held up.
What this shows: The chart covers 1990 to 2024. It plots Hub–Hub, Hub–Spoke and Point-to-Point on a vertical axis of Number of routes. Latest values: Hub–Hub 3,339; Hub–Spoke 20,747; Point-to-Point 15,207. Data run through 2024.
Conditions and method
Each count is a directional airport pair in a quarter in which it had scheduled domestic passenger service, added up over the quarters of the year: a pair served in all four quarters counts four times. In 2024 that is 39,293 routes from 13,110 distinct directional pairs. A route is hub-hub when both airports are among the 30 airports with the most passengers in 2023, hub-spoke when one is and point-to-point when neither is; the same airports classify every year.
From 2002 Q4 the data cover more of the network, because a federal reporting rule added the smaller airlines to them. Between 2001 and 2002, point-to-point routes go from 12,427 to 17,209, hub-spoke routes from 16,056 to 16,428 and hub-hub routes from 3,292 to 3,290. There is a step in point-to-point routes across that year and none in hub-spoke routes and hub-hub routes. Part of that step is the wider coverage, and the series cannot separate it from a change in the network. A step is a change larger than all but 5% of the series’ other year-to-year changes.