Temporal evolution analysis of the European air transportation system: air navigation route network and airport network

Abstract

Airspace is a networked space that constantly changes in order to adapt with the changing demand of air traffic. The goal of this research is to study the temporal evolution of the European air transportation system. We analyse two network layers: the air navigation route network and the airport network. For each network layer, we analyse the temporal evolution of seven centrality measures. We quantify the seasonal and weekly variation patterns by the coefficient of variation. We find that the air navigation route network is dominated by the summer/winter seasonal variations, while the airport network shows both summer/winter seasonal variations and peak/off-peak weekly patterns. From the distributions of the metrics, we find that hub nodes existing in both network layers are potentially bottlenecks of the network. Our research helps the stakeholders in air transportation systems to monitor the network performance over time and to better understand the network dynamics.