Hub connections

Watch the video: Your hub and its airports

When your airline has switched on Hub connections, a flight that reaches one of the airline's hubs on time keeps its connecting passengers on their next flight. Your PIREP and the airline's statistics show how many connections that saved.

The numbers are simulated. They are worked out from the passengers on board your flight, not from real passenger data.

When a flight saves connections

A flight counts when all of these are true:

• It landed at one of your airline's hubs (a flight that diverted elsewhere doesn't count).
• It reached the gate no more than 15 minutes after its scheduled arrival. Arriving early counts as on time.
• ACARS timed the arrival. Manual PIREPs, and flights filed before arrival times were recorded, don't count.

The arrival time comes from On-time performance: the scheduled departure plus the route's block time, with any minutes you paused the simulator taken off, so pausing never costs you.

How the number is worked out

• Passengers on board: the passenger count from your SimBrief plan or the dispatch page. Without one, the aircraft's seats times a typical load for that flight.
• Connecting passengers: between 18% and 34% of them, fixed for each flight, so the number on a PIREP never changes.

Where to see it

1. Open a PIREP that arrived at a hub. The Hub connections card shows how many connections the flight saved, or how late it was if it missed them.
2. On your own PIREPs, the card also shows how many connections you've saved in total at this airline.
3. Open Airline → Statistics for the airline's connections saved in the last 30 days and 12 months, with a table per hub.

Only accepted and complete PIREPs count towards the totals.

For staff: switching it on

1. Open Staff → Airline settings → Optional features.
2. Under Airline running, switch on Hub connections and On-time performance, and save. Without On-time performance the cards stay hidden.
3. Check your hubs under Staff → Operations → Hubs & airports: only arrivals at those airports count.

Hub connections uses the arrival times of On-time performance, so flights only start counting once arrival times are recorded.