ABSTRACT This paper studies the connectivity of European airports and their impact on regional development, measured by employment. It uses flight schedule data for 207 NUTS-2 regions from 2012 to 2019 in a network analysis. Statistical analysis shows that the degree grew steadily, while the shortest and quickest path connectivity decreased significantly in 2019. Moreover, the panel data analyses indicate that degree consistently positively impacts employment, whereas the significance of the shortest and quickest path’s impact is less consistent, indicating that focusing on increasing a region’s number of distinct edges might be most effective in stimulating regional development.