New routes and airport connectivity

This paper shows how module identification techniques can help airports evaluate the impact of new routes on their network connectivity. Although only carriers can choose whether to open a new route, this research is also of interest to airports and regional governments, who can offer incentives for new connections to desirable destinations. The analysis employs simulated annealing to verify the existence of highly interconnected subsystems, or modules, within the European aviation network. A module is a group of airports with very strong internal links in terms of exchanged seats, but weak connections to the rest of the network. From the standpoint of improving connectivity, we expect that new routes towards large airports belonging to other modules are the most desirable. We also find that the lower the interchange between the modules to be connected, the higher the connectivity gain. We test this hypothesis on all 467 European airports with at least one scheduled flight in autumn 2007.