[foobarian]

I found the hub-and-spoke explanation misleading. Even if you don't have a star arrangement you could still have a network of point-to-point flights that just constantly bounce back and forth between the same two cities. This is like a max flow network then and you can lose a flight or two and still be fine.

What I think is happening with SW is their planes are like pilots in Elite Dangerous, flying around the country to random destinations as the opportunity arises. This is not what point-to-point means to me, this is more like... sky Uber?

[shagie]

Not quite that - they've only got one plane body (the 737). Additionally, they've got the plan for what the routes should be. If you buy a flight from Albuquerque to Chicago ( https://www.southwest.com/routes/flights-from-albuquerque-to... - https://www.southwest.com/route-map/ - https://www.southwest.com/air/low-fare-calendar/select-dates... ) there is going to be a plane flying that leg.

What they don't have is a crew that does MDW - ABQ - MDW - ABQ - MDW - ... but rather a crew that hypothetically does MDW - ABQ - HOU - BWI - MDW . The exact route is based on what capacity people have purchased on different legs and may change from loop to loop based on demand.

However, this means that if there's a something that disrupts part of that (a storm cancels all the flights in MDW and HOU for a day) and there's an odd demand pattern, the plane that needs to do the BWI to MDW route is currently in ABQ. And while there is a plane in BWI that could pick up the leg of BWI to MDW, that crew is currently on a mandatory rest period... but you could use the crew that is scheduled to be deadheaded in from AUS to DCA (and then send them by ground to BWI)... but that plane is delayed.

At some point they say/said "stop, cancel everything - demand is now 0, for all planes, reposition the planes so that we can start flights on Dec 29 according to the purchased demand."