| Airport code | Airport | Primary and secondary air carriers | City | State | Hub type | Number of annual scheduled passengers | Percentage of total passengers | Number of annual scheduled A/C ops | Percentage of total A/C ops |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATL | Atlanta Hartsfield Intl | Delta, Airtran | Atlanta | GA | L | 36,321,239 | 5.79 | 642,727 | 4.87 |
| ORD | Chicago O'Hare Intl | United, American | Chicago | IL | L | 31,026,878 | 4.94 | 612,553 | 4.64 |
| LAX | Los Angeles Intl | United, American, Southwest | Los Angeles | CA | L | 26,323,259 | 4.19 | 447,170 | 3.39 |
| DFW | Dallas-Ft Worth Intl | American, Delta | Dallas-Ft Worth | TX | L | 24,148,619 | 3.85 | 493,772 | 3.74 |
| PHX | Phoenix Sky Harbor Intl | America West, Southwest | Phoenix | AZ | L | 16,930,419 | 2.70 | 370,247 | 2.80 |
| DEN | Denver Intl | United, Frontier | Denver | CO | L | 16,544,458 | 2.64 | 330,825 | 2.50 |
| LAS | Las Vegas McCarran Intl | Southwest, America West, United | Las Vegas | NV | L | 16,540,417 | 2.64 | 317,700 | 2.41 |
| IAH | George Bush Intercontinental | Continental, American | Houston | TX | L | 15,889,349 | 2.53 | 299,903 | 2.27 |
| MSP | Minneapolis-St Paul Intl | Northwest, American | Minneapolis | MN | L | 15,553,423 | 2.48 | 326,974 | 2.48 |
| DTW | Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County | Northwest | Detroit | MI | L | 15,124,490 | 2.41 | 337,816 | 2.56 |
| JFK | John F Kennedy Intl | American, Jet Blue, Delta, United | New York | NY | L | 15,050,456 | 2.40 | 245,475 | 1.86 |
| SFO | San Francisco Intl | United, American | San Francisco | CA | L | 14,856,842 | 2.37 | 260,501 | 1.97 |
| EWR | Newark Intl | Continental, American | Newark | NJ | L | 14,073,453 | 2.24 | 282,849 | 2.14 |
| MIA | Miami Intl | American, Continental | Miami | FL | L | 13,889,275 | 2.21 | 304,863 | 2.31 |
| MCO | Orlando Intl | Delta, Southwest, American | Orlando | FL | L | 12,631,347 | 2.01 | 201,203 | 1.52 |
| SEA | Seattle-Tacoma Intl | Alaska, United | Seattle | WA | L | 12,570,572 | 2.00 | 217,352 | 1.65 |
| STL | Lambert-St Louis Intl | American, Southwest | St Louis | MO | L | 12,412,120 | 1.98 | 295,148 | 2.23 |
| PHL | Philadelphia Intl | US Airways, American | Philadelphia | PA | L | 11,631,738 | 1.85 | 267,402 | 2.02 |
| CLT | Charlotte Douglas Intl | US Airways | Charlotte | NC | L | 11,589,824 | 1.85 | 239,173 | 1.81 |
| BOS | Boston Logan Intl | American, US Airways, Delta | Boston | MA | L | 10,665,476 | 1.70 | 207,138 | 1.57 |
| LGA | La Guardia | US Airways, American, Delta | New York | NY | L | 10,416,041 | 1.66 | 207,915 | 1.57 |
| CVG | Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky Intl | Delta | Covington-Cincinnati, OH | KY | L | 9,879,246 | 1.57 | 150,943 | 1.14 |
| BWI | Baltimore-Washington Intl | Southwest, US Airways | Baltimore | MD | L | 9,489,296 | 1.51 | 210,349 | 1.59 |
| HNL | Honolulu Intl | Aloha, Hawaiian, ATA | Honolulu | HI | L | 9,266,615 | 1.48 | 174,544 | 1.32 |
| PIT | Pittsburgh Intl | US Airways, Delta | Pittsburgh | PA | L | 9,212,335 | 1.47 | 188,154 | 1.42 |
| SLC | Salt Lake City Intl | Delta, Southwest | Salt Lake City | UT | L | 8,908,798 | 1.42 | 151,121 | 1.14 |
| FLL | Ft Lauderdale-Hollywood Intl | Continental, Delta, Southwest, American, US Airways, Spirit, Jet Blue | Ft Lauderdale | FL | L | 7,983,704 | 1.27 | 147,874 | 1.12 |
| IAD | Washington Dulles Intl | United, Delta, American | Washington | DC | L | 7,936,618 | 1.26 | 130,351 | 0.99 |
| MDW | Chicago Midway | American, Southwest | Chicago | IL | L | 7,573,932 | 1.21 | 161,468 | 1.22 |
| TPA | Tampa Intl | Southwest, Delta, US Airways, Continental, Air Tran, American | Tampa | FL | L | 7,544,284 | 1.20 | 145,968 | 1.11 |
| SAN | San Diego Intl-Lindburgh Field | Southwest, American, United | San Diego | CA | L | 7,224,573 | 1.15 | 143,298 | 1.08 |
| PDX | Portland Intl | Alaska, United, Southwest | Portland | OR | M | 5,970,960 | 0.95 | 122,407 | 0.93 |
| DCA | Washington Reagan Natl | US Airways, Delta | Washington | DC | M | 5,311,436 | 0.85 | 121,456 | 0.92 |
| CLE | Cleveland Hopkins Intl | Continental, American | Cleveland | OH | M | 5,007,767 | 0.80 | 86,572 | 0.66 |
| MEM | Memphis Intl | Northwest | Memphis | TN | M | 4,784,135 | 0.76 | 237,385 | 1.80 |
| Aggregate of all 35 airports | 460,283,394 | 73.34 | 9,080,596 | 68.75 | |||||
| Scheduled air transportation in the nation as a whole | 627,600,000 | 100.00 | 13,208,600 | 100.00 | |||||
Key: A/C = aircraft; L = large hubs; M = medium hubs.
Notes: Only scheduled passenger and A/C operations were considered to make the data compatible with T-100 segment data.
Airport hubs in this paper use the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration definition. There are four categories of total enplanements (i.e., physical counts): large (> 1% of total enplanements), medium (0.25%-0.999% of total enplanements), small hubs (0.05%-0.249% of total enplanements), and nonhub (< 0.05% of total enplanements). These are physical hubs.
There is a second definition that categorizes airports as a hub where inbound flights are scheduled to arrive from multiple origins within a short period of time thus creating a bank of passengers. The coordinated arrival and departure banks together form a wave of activities and lead to peaks in airlines schedules. Some physical hubs are, thus, operational hubs. However, an airport can be an operational hub without being a physical hub (i.e., airports primarily serving connecting passengers), and a physical hub may exist without being an operational hub (i.e., airports primarily serving origin and destination passengers.
Sources: U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Terminal Area Forecast (TAF) (Washington, DC: 2003); USDOT, FAA, Aerospace Forecasts, 2003-2014 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2003); and Official Airline Guide (OAG), available from http://www.oagflights.com.