Air Traffic Flow Analysis in Major Global Regions

This paper presents a framework for the analysis of air traffic flows at varying spatial and temporal scales and demonstrates the utility of the framework for comparative analysis of major global region air transport patterns in the last 10 years. The framework sets out spatial, temporal and industry structures for assessing air traffic flows. The extent of seasonality in air traffic is shown to depend on the size of community and the type of air carrier providing service. European air transport is shown to have particular strong seasonal variability in contrast to other regions. The spatial distribution of air traffic across the system of airports in each major global region has gradually become less concentrated and this is linked to capacity constraints at large airports and the availability of capacity at smaller airports. Despite 30 years of deregulation and liberalisation of air transport, industry concentration remains consistently very high in all global regions.