Empirical Study of Chinese Airline Network Structure Based on Complex Network Theory

An empirical study of Chinese domestic airline network structure is conducted by the complex network theory. The study shows that the present Chinese domestic airline network is a small-world network with degree distribution obeying a double power law. Compared with the network structure in 2005, its average mimimum path length and clustering coefficient decrease with the increases of node and average degree. The node throughput, distance strengths and degree correspond to the positive power law. The effect of degree on throughput is more significant than that on distance. The betweenness centrality and degree positively correlated with fluctuations. The degree-degree correlation of the present network is negative, which shows the nodes with large degree prefer to be connected to other nodes with small degree and the effect of throughput on connection between nodes is greater than the effect of distance. When the degree value is high, the clustering coefficient distribution on degree obviously follows power-law. It indicates that the group structure centering around airports with large degree has appeared in Chinese airline network.