Evolution of the business air travel network in the US from 1993 to 2011: A descriptive analysis using AIRNET

Despite recent attention focused on business air travel, most existing analyses rely on cross-sectional data drawn from a single year or season. To address this gap, this paper provides a descriptive portrait of business passengers' movements among 108 US metropolitan areas in each year from 1993 to 2011. The business air travel networks are examined at three levels: the node, the dyad, and the system. Node-level analysis reveals small fluctuations among historically dominant business cities, but also the recent rise of smaller emerging business cities. Dyad-level analysis highlights the continued importance of traditionally high-volume business routes (e.g. New York–Los Angeles), but that economic complementarity between smaller cities can also be a source of high-volume business traffic. Finally, system-wide analysis suggests that business travel among US cities is becoming more symmetric and evenly dispersed. The paper concludes with a discussion of these findings implications for managerial practice and their contribution to scholarly knowledge.