Hume Fellowship

Recipients of Hume Fellowship in 1993

Christine Spring

The second award was made in 1993 to Christine Elizabeth Spring, a 29 year old University of Auckland graduate employed as a traffic engineer at Beca Carter Hollings and Ferner. Christine had been involved in the design of many transport related projects, including the London Docklands Development. Here she analysed the Public Utilities requirements in the Dockland streets and developed a computer package to record and programme the various activities on the Dockland's land. She wrote a user-guide handbook to enable the programme to be widely utilised. Other projects included design and development of a 70km main highway in Tanzania, the assessment of Greenhouse Gases for the NZ Ministry of Transport, and development of tracking curves and wingspan clearance requirements for taxiways and loading bays at Auckland International Airport.

Christine's study at the University of Texas at Austin related to airport planning, design and airline operation. She saw these as rapidly growing and changing needs in New Zealand. Her thesis, "A Study of two types of airline route network: Hub and Spoke and Linear" describes the analysis of the two types of airline scheduling systems, hub and spoke, and linear point-to-point systems. Deregulation of airlines and free competition has caused many changes in US airline operations. Christine's case studies compared Southwest Airlines using a linear network versus American Airlines linear network pre-1978 deregulation, and hub and spoke network post deregulation. She developed a regression analysis for the effect of changes in the air transport industry over time, comparing the way Southwest and American Airlines utilise their resources.