Evolution of the international air transportation country network from 2002 to 2013

•The international air transportation country network is scale-free/small-world.•The country network gears towards a symmetric, transitive closure.•Top 5 Critical countries: US, France, Great Britain, Australia, and South Africa.•Structural and functional criticality of countries are highly correlated.•Criticality of a country is correlated to the GDP.

In this research, we analyze the evolution of the international air transportation country network from 2002 to 2013 with two perspectives: The network’s physical topology and the functional network with traffic information. Our analysis shows that the network is scale-free and has the small-world property. The evolution of triadic properties suggests that the network gears towards symmetric, transitive closure. We find that United States, Great Britain, and France are critical from both perspectives; Surprisingly, South Africa is particularly critical from topological point of view. Furthermore, topological and functional criticality are highly correlated to the GDP of a country.