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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • Originally airlines preferred them over two engined planes because they were safer,

    Up until ETOPS (aka Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim) was introduced in 1986, it was not even legal to run cross-atlantic flights to and from the U.S with twin engines.

    As I understand it, point-to-point taking over from hub-and-spoke coincided with mid-size high-range airplanes like the 787. Before that, the economics of running point-to-point had trouble penciling out, since you needed fairly large aircraft to handle the distance. Hence, hub-and-spoke made sense - run small aircraft to and from hubs and then run a large long-range aircraft carrying a large amount of passengers.