Focus city

In the airline industry, a focus city is an airport that is important to one airline but is not a hub. An airline has daily flights from the Focus city to many destinations that are also not its hubs. Even though the word "city" is part of this term, it means a city's airport, not the city.

An example of an airline's focus city is US Airways (now part of American Airlines) at Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia.^[1] Focus city airports can have some of the same facilities that hubs have. For example, the airline may repair or clean their aircraft at a focus city because it is cheaper. They might also have places and equipment to handle cargo.

Many low-cost carriers that mostly fly point-to-point use focus cities more than hubs. Southwest Airlines,^[2] Spirit Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Allegiant Air^[3] and WestJet in the Americas, and Ryanair, EasyJet, Norwegian Air Shuttle and Wizz Air in Europe are examples.

1. ↑ About US Airways, usairways.com, retrieved 2011-Mar-16
2. ↑ Singe, Kerry Hall and Steve Harrison. Southwest Airlines to land in Charlotte, The Charlotte Observer, charlotteobserver.com, September 28, 2010, retrieved 2011-Mar-16
3. ↑ Thomason, Art. Allegiant Air CEO rings NASDAQ bell Archived 2012-01-20 at the Wayback Machine, The Arizona Republic, azcentral.com, Feb. 4, 2009, retrieved 2011-Mar-16