Deregulation of air transport markets has shown that the introduction of competition may have drastic impacts on network configurations of airlines. Because of free route entry and exit, airlines will use their route networks to achieve traffic economies and maintain spatial monopolies in a competitive environment. On the US aviation market, deregulation has led to the widespread adoption of the hub-and-spoke network by airlines. The hub-and-spoke network requires a concentration of traffic both in space and time. This paper investigates how airline network configurations have changed after the deregulation of the European aviation market regarding spatial and temporal network concentration. The study uses OAG time schedule data for all flights originating from airports in the European Union during the period 1990-1999. Traffic distribution measures are employed to perform the analysis for different types of airlines: national, regional and low-cost. For the covering abstract see ITRD E124693.
Samenvatting