As Chapter 6 explains in greater detail, the government continues to regulate the airlines on all matters affecting safety. The government has performed this regulatory role since 1926, and continues to do so through the Federal Aviation Administration. The Airline Deregulation Act ended government economic regulation of airline routes and rates, but not airline safety. Hubs are strategically located airports used as transfer points for passengers and cargo traveling from one community to another. They are also collection points for passengers and cargo traveling to and from the immediate region to other parts of the country or points overseas.
Airlines schedule banks of flights into and out of their hubs several times a day.
Each bank includes dozens of planes arriving within minutes of each other. Once on the ground, the arriving passengers and cargo from those flights are transferred conveniently to other planes, that will take them to their final destinations. At a hub, travelers can connect to dozens, sometime hundreds, of flights to different cities, and often can do so several times of day. Travelers enjoy the advantage of staying with a single airline. A city of 100,000 residents, for example, is unlikely to generate enough passengers to any single destination to fill more than a handful of seats aboard a commercial jet.