Of Hubs , Narrowbodies and the dangers of being outflanked.

On first sight Kenya Airways termination of its 4 x weekly Nairobi-Delhi B737-800 service does not look significant news.One low demand, low frequency route. Nothing notable surely?

But there is. In fact three things .

First is whether, despite losses caused mainly by concerns about security in Kenya and especially on the coast, which is the destination of most tourists for all or at least part of their holidays and by the cutbacks to and reduced loads on West African services, taking spokes out of a hub network is the right recipe.

Second is the question of just how far will people with any kind of a choice fly on a narrowbody?

A hubbing network may initially be born almost accidentally. People use connections because they are there and usually because there is no direct point to point flight on the same day,- or at all. This can happen even if the airline has only two destinations, simplistically one north and one south. Then if it adds an east and a west it finds it has more passengers on each leg as numbers, albeit initially small ones, flow from each sector to another building a bedrock of revenue which is not affected by events in or the economy of the home base. Add more spokes and the synergy increases until eventually it drives the airline.This spreading of the sources of business frees it from some of the ups and downs of its home base and enables it to become a much bigger airline than the base country would support on its own. Historically KLM was the first airline to espouse this as a policy, something BA and its predecessors did by accident rather than design via the sheer weight of destinations and frequencies which developed out of Heathrow. Emirates, when it originally started with a single leased A300 and B727, was point to point but quickly grew out of that to be, along with its new Gulf colleagues, one of the world's greatest hubbers. Success in the game depends on adding destinations and frequencies as quickly as possible, outrunning both the less nimble competitors and the red ink. Each spoke adds a handful or more passengers to a selection of the others. Turning the clock back and dropping them risks the whole ball unravelling. In Kenya Airways' case getting rid of the Delhi service saves money here and now but it also deprives other spokes of revenue  and so reduces their profitability. That's not fatal and as a one off may be the best thing to do but if further spokes are removed, especially at a time when the home base is down on appeal, the process could have very serious unintended consequences.

The narrow body question may or may not be part of the problem on this sector but it is worth consideration. At the end of the 707/DC8/VC10 era it was considered that narrowbodies were dead for anything much more than a 4 hour trip. Indeed when the A300 first appeared there were fears that on the shorthaul routes it flew any competing narrowbody had little chance. As time went on that turned out not to be the case especially where narrowbodies enabled higher frequencies. As result SAS did not keep their A300s long and as a type they didn't dominate ever Europe. On longer hauls however the story was different and once a wide body appeared the narrowbodies were pretty much dead. Hence the development of smaller widebodies, first the 3 engined DC10 and Lockheed Tristar then the first of the big twins, the  A300/310 and the B767.

Since then there have been some slow inroads by narrowbodies pushing their way back into shorter long haul business. First came 757s used by inclusive tour operators. They have been accepted as a way to get the lowest possible seat prices and flights out of local airports but with Thompsons and others now introducing 787s their days on those trips are probably numbered. Then came their use by the major carriers on UK and Europe hub-avoiding sectors trom secondary airports to the eastern USA and Caribbean. If flying Bristol or Birmingham direct to New York in a 757 was the price to pay for not fighting ones way to and through Heathrow then that was OK. Run a 787 or other wide body against it though and it's game over for the narrowbody.

One wonders if Africa may not also be tiring of long distance narrowbodies too. It's true that trans continental multi stopping 737s can provide links which would otherwise be absent but once each point can stand on its own feet the demand for nonstops to the hub is difficult to resist and it's a question of how long a narrowbody can hold out before a Gulf carrier puts in a widebody whose economics are also helped along by its much greater cargo capacity.We have touched on it before but one can see the attraction of finance people of the lower purchase and operating costs of a stretched 737-800 compared with the 787-8 which does not offer that many more seats.  Putting aside,-and one shouldn't,- that additional cargo potential of the widebody, the first sight lower risk attraction of the narrowbody is obvious. Who though would choose to fly on one if there is someone else offering a widebody alternative,- and there is from a large number of African countries to the Gulf and a plethora of points beyond? That's even before other factors such as flying via glitzy, easy/a pleasure to use airports rather than Addis or Nairobi come into it. It looks as if for some at least, transiting one of these may be preferable to 7 or so hours nonstop in what is essentially a short haul aircraft.

This brings us onto the third point. Essential to a hub's successs is it not being outflanked by:

 a)Being overwhelmed by the network and/or frequencies of a neighbour.

or

b)Being out- positioned geographically (ie flown over, around, behind, in front of) as has happened to Europe for much of the world east and south by the Gulf hubs who in turn for some destinations have been jumped by Turkish. The Asian carriers have suffered similarly to the Middle East and Europe as the Gulf operators offer a vastly greater number of destinations, In Europe the vast majority of these bypass the national capitals and avoid the much disliked ternational to domestic connections.

or

c) The vital home hub airport losing out in sheer attractiveness or ease of use to others in comparative attractiveness or ease of use. For example even Heathrow can claw back some domestic business currently flowing out of the UK provinces over Europe, Turkey or the Gulf if the transfers were made easy, hassle-free, seamless ,and reliable.

Or any combination of all three or any two of these.

It looks as if Nairobi based Kenya Airways may be suffering from elements of such outflanking to add to the first two questions, It's not a problem exclusive to them or to Kenya. It's how an airline handles the whole constantly shifting hub game that matters. That's what makes the Delhi announcement possibly significant and interesting way beyond that first impression.