The Impact of COVID-19 on Air Transportation Network in the United States, Europe, and China

Xiaoqian Sun,Judith Rosenow,Hartmut Fricke,Sebastian Wandelt

doi:10.3390/su13179656

Abstract

The air transportation industry has undergone unprecedented changes throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, as measured in terms of flight cancellations, aircraft retirements, airline bailouts, and disconnection of worldwide communities. In this study, we performed a cross-comparison of the impact COVID-19 had on three aviation centers of the world—the United States, Europe, and China. Methodologically, we analyzed the air transportation system as complex networks and by using time series analysis. We discovered that the peak of COVID-19 impact was around April/May 2020, followed by a strong recovery mostly in domestic subsystems. We found a homogeneous impact on the United States, a strong heterogeneous impact on Europe, and a rather short-term impact on China. Domestic flight connectivity recovered much faster than international flight connectivity, particularly for the Chinese air transportation system. Our study provided a comprehensive, data-driven analysis of the COVID-19 impact on air transportation for these three major regions, augmented by references to the rich scientific literature on this subject. We hope that our work opens up pathways to a better understanding and a higher degree of preparedness for future pandemics.

Highlights

Aviation stakeholders have, despite temporary setbacks, seen decades of growth, spurred by the increasing desire for mobility and rising economic wealth
One of these challenges was anticipated for a while by some researchers but almost entirely neglected by the public and responsible policymakers: Air transportation with its unprecedented connectivity creates an environment where small epidemic outbreaks may quickly turn into full-blown pandemics
The impact on the air transportation system was explored from unique perspectives: the international country network, domestic subnetworks, and the heterogeneous effect on airports

Summary

Introduction

Despite temporary setbacks, seen decades of growth, spurred by the increasing desire for mobility and rising economic wealth. This study reports on a cross-comparison of the impact of COVID-19 on the three aviation centers of the world: the United States, Europe-27 The origin region is highlighted by color in the map, and the corresponding destination continents have a subplot with the temporal evolution visualized on top, distinguishing the min–max-normalized number of flights for the years 2019 and 2020. The results for Europe-27 (Figure 5) show a temporal strong recovery to four continental regions: Africa, Asia, North America, and South America These evolutions are purely driven by European policies. The United States is the most important country in the worldwide air transportation system, regarding our complex network-based importance measure. It is followed by several European countries and China. While we cannot prove a causality relationship here, it at least suggests that there could be a hidden, additional explanation

Domestic Flights

Airports

Findings

Conclusions