Abstract
China’s air transportation system is evolving with its own unique mechanism. In particular, the structural features of the Chinese air passenger network (CAPN) are of interest. This paper aims to analyze the CAPN from holistic and microcosmic perspectives. Considering that the topological structure and the capacity (i.e., available passenger-seats) flow are important to the air network’s performance, the CAPN structure features from non-weighted and weighted perspectives are analyzed. Subnets extracted by time-scale constraints of one day or every two-hours are used to find the temporal features. This paper provides some valuable conclusions about the structural characteristics and temporal features of the CAPN. The results indicate that the CAPN has a small-world and scale-free structure. The cumulative degree distribution of the CAPN follows a two-regime power-law distribution. The CAPN tends to be disassortative. Some important airports, including national air-hubs and local air-hubs, remarkably affect the CAPN. About 90% of large capacities exist between airports with large degrees. The properties of CAPN subnets extracted by taking two hours as the time-scale interval shed light on the air network performance and the changing rule more accurately and microcosmically. The method of the spectral destiny estimation is used to find the implicit periodicity mathematically. For most indicators, a one-day cycle, two-day cycle, and/or three-day cycle can be found.
Highlights
With international trade expansion and accelerated globalization, the movements of people and cargoes are frequent
As a case study on the Chinese air passenger network (CAPN), this paper investigates the overall network features, the structure features of two types of subnets extracted by time-scale constraints and the periodicity of one type of subnets
(i) In the CAPN, for an airport, k is the number of directly-connected airports, d is the average minimum number of airlines that one needs to take to get from an airport to another airport, and C is the probability that two airports that are directly connected to the same airport are directly connected to each other
Summary
With international trade expansion and accelerated globalization, the movements of people and cargoes are frequent. In order to profit from efficient travelling, people have higher requirements for the speed and timeliness of transportation. Transportation infrastructures are of crucial importance to satisfy efficient travelling requirements [1,2]. Compared with that of water, rail, or road, the contribution of air transportation is becoming more and more necessary and important. Air transportation plays an irreplaceable role in the modern world [3]. Air transportation is a necessary means for the fast and effective movements of people and cargoes over large distances, and it is critical to the functioning of countries and the world economy. Examining the structure and growth mechanisms of air transportation thoroughly is crucial [3]
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