In a previous article, Jay Honeck said:
Of course, IMHO this flies in the face of economic realities.
Although the jury is still out on the Eclipse jet/air taxi model, the
hub & spoke system evolved because it was the most efficient way to
provide cheap transportation to as many people as possible. The fact

Exactly. Smaller planes use more fuel per passenger, plus more of the
other overhead costs per passenger. If you want to keep the cost per
passenger down, which I assume they do, then the airlines need to start
flying fewer trips per day on bigger airplanes.

I like the idea somebody else in this thread had of encouraging that
behaviour by setting landing fees based on how many operations per hour
happen that hour. Or decide how many landing slots they have in the peak
hours, and auction them off to the highest bidder with the starting bid
"free". Airlines looking for lower costs will change their schedules to
avoid the hours where slots are going for lots of money, and people
willing to pay a premium can still get exactly the arrival time they want.


--
Paul Tomblin http://blog.xcski.com/
"I look forward to killing you soon!" - Ninja, http://www.askaninja.com/