Hub and Spoke
What does everyone think of the hub and spoke system. In my opinion, if you want to move passengers from some obscure point A to some point C, the most efficient way is to route them through point B, the hub.
For as long as I can think of (10,20,30 years), just about every airline has had some sort of a hub and spoke system. While low cost carriers have a few point to point routes, they still mainly have a hub and spoke system. Southwest is the only airline I can think of that uses mainly point to point routes.
The reason why I ask this question is because I was reading Southwest's January operational preformance, and while their load factor was up 4% for january, it was up from 58%, by far the lowest load factor in the industry. Would Southwest be a better and more efficient airline if they used a hub and spoke system?