Authors: Alan Wang, Kun Xu, Brenden Cheung
Air is one of the most common types of domestic transportation in the United States. Due to the colossal amount of people connected through these transportation methods, it forms a vast transportation network. In this paper, we use complex network concepts and methods to analyze the development of the US Domestic Airline Network from 2009 to 2018. Methods and models employed in this paper include Centrality, Assortativity, Small-World Properties, Scale-Free properties, and Targeted Attack Tolerance. This study demonstrates the consolidation of the Hub-and-Spoke system of the industry and particularly focuses on the rise and fall of the small airports in the system.
Our main finding focuses on the development of small airports during the decade of 2009. From 2009 to 2014, following the end of the recession, there was an expansion of smaller regional airports. However, they remained relatively separated from larger airports. From 2014 to 2017, smaller airports were shut down due to market saturation. And since 2018, there has been a reinforcement of the hub-and-spoke system, with smaller airports opening and connecting to major hubs, resulting in a more interconnected network, which continues to be the status quo of today.