Even if the a380 is dead, food for thought: In 5-10 years we may have a 300 person 1 hr transport from sydney to New York by way of the BFR. That is hub and spoke
However that is only good for very long routes. Chicago to London is faster with current jets after you consider all the time wasted transferring to the BFR. Chicago to London can scale down to a direct Milwaukee (Wisconsin) to Stockholm (Sweden), if there is just a small amount of demand.
Is your average human's health and safety really compatible with the acceleration required for ballistic travel?
Engineering finds a way.
We have pretty good data for what very high G-forces do to the human body and what the failure rates of rocket launches are, and neither are compatible with routine commercial flight.
And the cost of a flight would be 300-400k in fuel, which means that tickets would be roughly premium economy cost or business cost. Business would eat up day trip returns from ny to shanghai in a heartbeat. Maybe people would have to wear a g force suit like pilots?
Long-and-skinny scales better than hub-and-spoke. Comparing the systems, you have identical origin and destination airport traffic. With long-and-skinny, however, traffic at congested hubs is avoided and reduced.
Long-and-skinny is purely a reality because of improved jet technology, in reliability and efficiency. What four engines could barely do in 1969 two engines comfortably manage today.
It's an adaptation for lower overall traffic density and simplifies routing, but direct flights scale much better because you can more likely do A > X > D not just A > B > C > D.