How do you depart from different airports?

[dodos9]

Hello guys!
I have only played this fantastic game for 2 or 3 days and I do not get loads of stuff. However, the worst thing for me to get is how to depart from airports different than your base. I have read the game manual and it says that you need to rent at least 4 gates to create a focus city and then you can depart from it. BUT, how am i supposed to rent 4 gates if I am not going to use them. Let's say that my base is London-Luton and I want to create a focus city in Madrid. The ONLY airport I can fly from, to Madrid is Luton obviously. So, I do not need 4 gates to keep Luton-Madrid route. Or maybe I have to rent 4 gates in Madrid even if I am not using them and straight after that make it a focus city and create routes from Madrid. I am a bit confused with this topic, but I hope you are not confused with what I have just written. BTW how much does it cost to create a focus city(EXcluding gates cost)?
Any help appreciated.
Thank you
Dominik

[pseudoswede]

The cost to create a focus city is 60x the gate cost. So MAD would cost 21M (plus 1.4M in gate rental fees). You could rent 4 gates, create a focus city, then immediately return 3 gates, but that is a colossal waste of money.

The best strategy would be to have a high enough DOC so that you can order enough planes to create at least 31 (preferably 40) routes out of MAD plus have 22.4M in cash available on the same game day the planes are delivered.

[dodos9]

Thanks a lot for your help!
There is quite a long way ahead of me to be able to pay more than 20 million to create focus city. Anyway, now I know what it is all about!
Once again, thank you!
Dominik