Robustness of Airline Alliance Route Networks

The aim of this study is to analyze the robustness of the three major air-line alliances ’ (i.e., Star Alliance, oneworld and SkyTeam) route networks. Firstly, the normalization of a multi-scale measure of vulnerability is pro-posed in order to perform the analysis in networks with di↵erent sizes, i.e., number of nodes. An alternative node selection criterion is also proposed in order to study robustness and vulnerability of such complex networks, based on network eciency. And lastly, a new procedure –the inverted adaptive strategy – is presented to sort the nodes in order to anticipate network break-down. Finally, the robustness of the three alliance networks are analyzed with (1) a normalized multi-scale measure of vulnerability, (2) an adaptive strategy based on four di↵erent criteria and (3) an inverted adaptive strategy based on the eciency criterion. The results show that Star Alliance has the most resilient route network, followed by SkyTeam and then oneworld. It was also shown that the inverted adaptive strategy based on the eciency criterion –inverted eciency – shows a great success in quickly breaking net-works similar to that found with betweenness criterion but with even better results