Connectivity in Air Transport Networks: An Assessment of Models and Applications

This paper classifies and compares eight different connectivity models employed in air transport literature and applies them to European airports. Traditional size-based measures tend to underestimate the accessibility of small airports and overestimate the centrality of large airports. Small airports may have high accessibility levels if they have a few flights to well-connected hub airports. The correlation between the measures is much higher for larger airports than for smaller ones. At lower levels of analysis, the choice of the connectivity measure substantially influences the results obtained. We have identified the criteria that must be considered when choosing a connectivity measure. © 2013 LSE and the University of Bath