Connectivity in air transport networks: models, measures and applications

The paper aims to analyze the different connectivity models employed to measure hub connectivity and airport accessibility. They are classified in terms of considered variables, underlying models and obtained results. We compute eight different measures of hub connectivity and airport accessibility for all the European airports. The results show the similarities and differences among the measures. With respect to the correlation to the traditional measures of airport size, small airports may have high accessibility if they have just a few flights to well-connected airports. On the other hand, big airports do not necessarily have a proportionally high hub connectivity since it requires very intense temporal coordination of flights that can be obtained only by large hub carriers with efficient wave-system structures.