Latitudinal Intermediacy: COPA Airlines

Source: Network from COPA Airlines web site. Paths are approximate. COPA Airlines is a medium-sized Panamanian company operating from its major hub in Panama City (Tocumen International Airport – PTY). In 2022, it carried 15.72 million passengers. Panama City is strategically located as the intermediate location of the Americas; the

Longitudinal Intermediacy: Icelandair

Note: Also includes seasonal services. Icelandair is a small airline company that carried around 3.44 million passengers in 2022, from a pre-pandemic peak of 4.4 million in 2019. Because of the convenient intermediary location of Reykjavik along the transatlantic Great Circle route, the airline has successfully established a pure long-distance

Stages in Air Network Development

Source: Adapted from O’Connor, K. (1995) “Airport Development in Southeast Asia”, Journal of Transport Geography, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 269-279. Air network development is influenced by technical changes for aircraft and commercial changes, which can be summarized in four stages: Stage 1 (Initial development; connecting effect). During the 1930s

Airline Deregulation and Hub-and-Spoke Networks

Hubs existed before deregulation, but the removal of restrictions on market entry and exit, along with policies permitting airline mergers, freed surviving carriers to consolidate hub-and-spoke networks feeding traffic to and from strategically located hubs. Prior to deregulation policies (end of 1970s-early 1980s), many airline services were taking place on

Main Air Transport Service Ranges (From New York)

There are three main air transport ranges serviced by different types of aircraft: Regional. Planes and crews on regional services can perform 2 to 8 flights per day, depending on the flight time. Regional aircrafts such as the Airbus A319/320/321, the Boeing 737, and the Embraer E190/195, with an operational

Air Freedom Rights

Traditionally, an airline needs the approval of the governments of the various countries involved before it can fly in or out of a country or even fly over another country without landing. Before World War II, this did not present too many difficulties since the range of commercial planes was

Air Unit Load Device

Source: Wikipedia. Unit load devices (ULD) come in several dimensions and are designed to fit the bellyhold of a jet plane, particularly wide-bodied aircraft. The number of containers that can be fitted is a function of the length of the cargo area and the sizes of the ULDs. The loading

New York / Hong Kong Air Routes: Conventional and Polar

Source: Aero, no. 16, October 2001. The older, more circuitous routes between Asia and North America, typified by R222, came at the cost of either a reduced payload or a refueling stop en route; commonly Anchorage. New polar routes, like Polar 2, were opened in 2001 and permitted fuller payloads,