Focus city

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In the airline industry, a focus city is a location that is not a hub, but from which the airline has non-stop flights to several destinations other than its hubs. For example, Northwest Airlines had focus city operations at Indianapolis, serving 17 non-hub destinations^[1] as of June 2007.

Compared to a hub operation, flights from focus cities are often less frequent, served by smaller regional aircraft, and cater more to origin & destination traffic instead of connecting traffic. From Indianapolis, Northwest serves Philadelphia 3 times daily with a 50-seat CRJ, but the nearby Detroit hub has 8 daily flights with mainline aircraft.

The term "focus city" is somewhat of a misnomer, since it generally refers to an airport rather than a city. For example, US Airways has focus city operations at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, but not at the two other major airports for the New York City region: John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens or Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey. Other terms with equivalent meaning are "hublet", "mini-hub", "key city."

Focus cities are also commonly used by low-cost operators such as Southwest Airlines or Ryanair that primarily fly point-to-point and thus do not have large concentrations of hub operations.