Hub
An airline's central connecting airport, where most of its flights and usually its largest crew base are — not always your base.
Definition
A hub is the airport an airline builds its network around, funnelling passengers from spoke routes through connecting banks of flights. Full-service carriers typically operate one or a few hubs — Dubai for Emirates, Doha for Qatar Airways, Istanbul for Turkish Airlines — while US majors run several. The hub is where the airline's head office, training centre and largest crew base usually sit, but crew bases can exist at airports that are not hubs.
What it means for you
Hub life means the widest roster variety and the most colleagues, and at Gulf carriers the hub is the only base, so your whole life is there. At multi-hub airlines the hub you are based at shapes your flying: a Frankfurt base flies a different network from Munich, a Dallas base from Miami. If a city is the reason you want an airline, check whether crew are actually based there and not just flown through it.
In practice
Turkish Airlines' Istanbul hub is the base for its crew and the reason its rosters mix Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas in a single month; Qatar Airways' single Doha hub is why every crew member lives in one city.
Go deeper
Related terms
4 terms- BaseCrew lifeThe airport where your duties start and end and where you must live within reach — the single fact that most shapes a cabin crew life.
- TransferCrew lifeMoving to another crew base, fleet or company role — by seniority bid at US carriers, by vacancy and approval almost everywhere else.
- Layover cityCrew lifeA city where a crew is rostered to rest between sectors — the reward of long-haul flying and the reason many people apply at all.
- RotationFlight operationsA complete trip that starts and ends at your base — one or more sectors, with any layovers in between.