Dec. 5, 2001

Most travelers know that airlines do not fly non-stop to every city in the country so getting from one city to another may require them to pass through a large airport and use a connecting flight. What they may not know is that this travel pattern is referred to as the hub and spoke system. The hub is the large, popular city and the spokes are the smaller cities around it. Michael Levey '02 has always been fascinated by this aspect of the airline industry and has chosen to study this topic in depth for his senior honors thesis.

Levey, from Pine Brook, New Jersey, is undertaking the yearlong study in pursuit of departmental honors in economics and business. At Lafayette, students are encouraged to explore a topic of interest in a particular major or disciplinary program. Lafayette recognizes superior academic work by awarding honors for outstanding performance in writing a senior thesis or in conducting senior research.

"My topic is an econometric model for predicting the future locations of U.S. airline hubs," explains Levey. "I am going to study the hub and spoke system currently used by airlines, which since deregulation, has been critical in that airlines have increased load factors, reduced average costs, and offered more nonstop flights from a given city to more points than would be possible without a hub."

"The decision to make a city a hub is not something that can be done overnight," continues Levey. "It is a decision that affects numerous factors that I plan to study such as the population or weather patterns of a city, which in the end could better satisfy the passenger, thus increasingprofits and making airlines more competitive in the future."

Levey chose this project as his thesis topic because of his fascination with this aspect of the airline industry. "I live near Newark, New Jersey, where Continental recently chose Newark to be its hub," says Levey. "Since this decision, Continental has been turning significant profits for the airline industry. This is an opportunity to research what factors are involved in airlines choosing a city to be its hub."

Although the events of September 11, 2001 have had a significant negative impact on the airline industry, Levey says his model will work regardless of the state of the industry. "While the most recent terrorist attacks on the U.S. have drastically lowered passenger demand, we feel that in the long run, passengers will once again choose to fly when they are confident that airports are safe," says Levey. " As a result learning where to create and expand hubs now will become even more important to success in the future."

Levey says that there has not been much research on the location of airline hubs and that this is a great opportunity to try and make his mark. "Doing research is basically a never ending cycle of constantly bettering society in the future by taking past research and building on it," says Levey. "And I chose to be a part of this cycle."

In doing research for his thesis Levey has relied heavily upon the expertise of the staff at Skillman Library. "The library staff is unbelievable with the help they can provide in finding rare data or getting practically any document out there through the inter library request," says Levey. "The librarians are phenomenal."

"This year the librarians sent out letters to all honors students, giving them the opportunity to meet individually with reference librarians so we could talk about their research needs and guide them," says Terese Heidenwolf, Head of Information and Instructional Services. "Michael was the first one to take advantage of this service. I've met with him probably ten times or even more, helping him get the data he needs from reference books and government web sites."

"It's a big project to gather all this information and some people don't always understand what a time consuming process it can be," continues Heidenwolf. "Michael's learned that and fortunately he started early enough to get all the data he needs. He's enthusiastic and eager and will learn a lot through this project."

Levey is also relying on the expertise of his thesis advisor, Thomas Bruggink, associate professor of economics and business."Mike is looking at many, many variables for his location model because he wants to distinguish it from the two earlier studies on this issue," says Bruggink. "He is also very thorough. When he estimates the model using his sample, many of these variables will not make it to the final version. I envision around 10 variables at most, but this is only a guess. He came up with several variables as an extension of variables from the literature review, and some he came up with on his own. Mike tries very hard and wants all his work to be 'perfect'."

Levey says he is glad to be working with Bruggink. "He is clearly qualified, as shown by his published work and success in his past students' theses," says Levey. "At the same time, he is a confident and determined person which are important qualities that I look for."

Next week, Levey will present his thesis to the economics department for review. "It's not going to be easy but it's a great thing," says Levey. "I'll use their review to make it better." In May, Levey will turn in his final report.

Last summer Levey studied abroad in Mexico. He took classes for six weeks, while staying with a Spanish family. Levey is on the dean's list, is the captain of the men's varsity tennis team, member of the chi phi fraternity, Omicron Delta Epsilon, International Honor Society for Economics, and in the investment club.