SKYNET: An R package for generating air passenger networks for urban studies

Abstract

There is a long tradition of urban studies invoking air transport data either for tackling the city/air transport-nexus head on (e.g. in research on the causality between urban-economic development and air transport connectivity) or as a secondary data source (e.g. in research mapping city networks). However, air transport statistics rarely come in a format that allows for their immediate scrutiny in light of the research questions at hand, so that handling and transforming these data often involves both practical challenges and considerable effort. Against this backdrop, this article introduces ‘SKYNET’, a flexible R package that allows generating bespoke air transport statistics for urban studies based on publicly available data from the Bureau of Transport Statistics (BTS) in the United States. The basic elements of the package are explained, after which we demonstrate its usefulness by showing its potential for addressing research questions emerging in the literatures on 1) evolving urban landscapes of air travel accessibility, and 2) differences in intercity air transport networks by scale, types and season. We argue that this R package has the potential to become the backbone of a range of easily navigable tools overcoming some of the main methodological challenges researchers face when handling complex airline data in an urban context.