The changes in airline network configurations (especially temporal configurations) in Europe

Abstract

The topic of this article is concerned with the changes of airline network configurations (mainly temporal concentration) in Europe. Air transport in Europe reached significant milestones in 1997, when the air transport became fully liberalized (country from EU 10 in 2004 after their entry to EU). Airline liberalization influenced the configuration of airline networks into hub-andspoke system that is typical by temporal and spatial concentration. The temporal concentration is connected with the adoption or intensification of wave-system structures that considerably influenced overall traffic growth. The wave system structure is the complex of incoming and outgoing flights that are organized such that all incoming flight has connection to all outgoing flights. It is known that airports with wave system perform better due to the number of direct connections via hub. Therefore changes will be observed in transport strategies between years 2005 and 2013, specifically 2005, 2009 and 2013 in the “typical day” – Tuesday in June. The selected area for research is 19 countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The main airports and also the primary airlines (mainly classical airlines) are selected for the counting of wave-system structures in these countries. The main interest should be in the results of differences between airports as a result of their urban hierarchy and also their location in Europe (political and historical differences), which are or are not affected by the liberalization of air transport. It is expected that airports in countries such as Germany or Austria should have more efficient temporal concentration compared with countries such as Czech Republic or Hungary. This is due to the size of city where the airport is located and the liberalization of air transport in Europe.