Summary Based on the single allocation p‐hub median location problem in hub‐and‐spoke networks, this paper studies the aviation hubs location optimization of express enterprise, primarily using p‐median model and greedy dropping heuristic algorithm to solve the initial candidate locations of the aviation hubs by Lingo. Then, the integer program model of the location and allocation of the aviation hubs was set up, with the upper limit of the distribution distance as the main constraint. The improved locations were calculated by immune algorithm on Matlab. The numerical example of A express enterprise was presented. After analyzing the status and the problems of aviation hub location in East China, the two best hub locations Wuxi and Hangzhou were finally determined by above model with the total cost reduced by 19.6%. The optimization results show the validation of the model.