Evolution of domestic airport networks: a review and comparative analysis

Previous studies on airport networks are strongly bounded time-wise or only conducted for single networks at distinct levels of abstraction and for distinct topological features. Here, we review and compare the evolution of domestic airport networks (DANs) for Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Russia, US and Europe during the period 2002–2013. This is the first study on a consistent global dataset and allows for direct comparisons of network features. The air passenger traffic is tremendously increasing in all eight networks, with the largest number of passengers in US, followed by Europe and China. Degree distributions can often be best fitted with a truncated power-law (e.g. Brazil and US) or log-normal (e.g. Australia and Canada). While all eight networks clearly exhibit small-world properties, the average shortest path length is between 2.1 (China/Russia) and 4.0 (Canada). Our study sets a baseline for understanding the topology and evolution of DANs.