Airway Network Characteristics Based on Complex Network Model

Airway networks are the basic carriers of air traffic. Characterizing airway networks will significantly improve the operating efficiency of aviation. This study is targeted at the airway network composed of 1 479 waypoints in 2018 of China. Together with spatial structures, traffic flow characteristics, and the dominating traffic flow, four airway network models are constructed from the perspective of complex networks, including physical airway network, airway traffic network, directed airway traffic network, and dominance-based directed airway traffic network. Then the topological characteristics of different networks are statistically analyzed by using typical network measure indices, and the differences of these indices among different networks are investigated. Thereby, composite indices are proposed. Statistical results show that the airway network under the influence of traffic flows exhibits richer heterogeneity and asymmetrical between-node relationship, and the distributions of indices among different networks are significantly different. Comparative analysis of composite indices and traffic flows show that some waypoints yield great results in multiple composite indices and traffic volumes; some waypoints display large results in multiple composite indices but low traffic flows, and other waypoints only perform well in certain composite indices. The importance levels of waypoints are divided, by the K-means method based on degree composite index, betweenness composite index and closeness composite index, into three levels, and the reasonableness of clustering results is validated by the statistical results of traffic flows, airport number, and flight delay.