Airline flights in much of the world are organised through a system called "hub-and-spoke," invented by U.S. airline Delta in 1955; made widespread in the USA after that country's deregulation of the airline industry in 1978; and commonplace in Europe as well since the European Union finally eliminated the last of its own air-industry restrictions in 1997. The model is named after the basic design of a traditional wheel, where the "hub" is a central airport and the spokes are the flights coming in and out (in the case of Iberia, of course, the hub being Madrid).
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