In the early 1990s, the air transport crisis required airlines to review their development strategy.
Gone was the extensive global network. To limit costs, it was better to focus on efficient, selective and dense coverage of the most profitable routes, well structured around hubs. In the United States, where the concept was born in the 1980s, this was called the hub and spoke strategy.
CDG, Air France's hub
Air France's natural choice for its central hub was Paris-Charles de Gaulle 2. Flights to and from Paris CDG 2 were reorganized around five connecting banks, each consisting of a wave of arrivals and a wave of departures, to provide maximum connections in the shortest possible time. A colossal job, carried out in cooperation with Aéroports de Paris in particular, which materialized in 1996. Sunday, March 31 at 7:15 am, flight AF2816 to Geneva launched the Air France hub at Paris CDG 2. After six months of operations, without adding any new aircraft but by better organizing all the arrivals and departures, the airline's traffic had already increased by 20% compared to 1995! Since then, the hub's capacity has steadily increased; the number of connecting banks has risen from five to six.