The spatial configuration of airline networks in Europe

The deregulation of US domestic passenger aviation in 1978 resulted in the reconfiguration of airline networks into radial route systems, spatially concentrated around a small number of central airports or ‘hubs’. This paper investigates whether a similar spatial concentration trend can be observed in the European aviation network after deregulation at the airline network level. Using the network concentration index, it is demonstrated that European ‘flag carriers’ already showed a very high traffic concentration rate at the beginning of deregulation. Between 1990 and 1999, the distribution of European traffic of these carriers remained remarkably stable according to the network concentration index. A spatial concentration trend of European traffic on a small number of hubs can only be observed for some regional airlines.