The Art of Choosing Airline Routes On The Aviation Network
YouTube Video Source: https://youtu.be/E3jfvncofiA
The above video is about how Airlines choose their routes. The interesting part about aviation is how every airline has their own route network, but all of the airlines together also make up one giant “aviation” network around the world. The key that airlines can use is that it is much easier for a passenger to connect on the same airline, while switching mid journey to another “airline” network is hard. This allows for some interesting concepts in networks to arise.
The first concept that applies in this video is at 3:12. Essentially, the narrator describes how airlines choose to form a direct connection from one destination (or node) to another when both are already in their network. The interesting piece is how an airline can pre-determine who will use the direct connection between the two destinations because it already knows how many people are connecting through other airports to reach that destination. In cases like road networks, adding a road may slow down the entire average trip time. In the airline network, the routes affect earnings, and choosing the paths carefully by using data about who is travelling through other parts of the network affects these earnings. Like with the incorrect addition of a road in Braess’ Paradox affecting travel time, the airline’s earnings may decrease due to less travel to the connecting airport. This may happen if half of the plane to the connecting airport was moving onwards to the destination. That half would then be directly travelling to the new destination, and the route to the old connection would be half full.
The second concept that is interesting about airline networks is the power that an airline’s connections has on other airline’s networks. At 7:58, the narrator discusses how an airline may start a route just to prevent another from gaining power on that part of the network. In class, network power was discussed in reference to a nodes position on a network, and how the node can have power. What is interesting about the aviation network is that forming an edge can generate power for an airline on the network, and how control of an edge to one node may affect a completely different part of the network. In this case, flying to Iceland was not to take power on the Dallas to Iceland route but to ensure that customers would not connect through Iceland to Europe. The choice to add a route to Iceland increased American’s power in a different part of the network, that is, direct flights from the US to Europe. So, the position of Iceland in the aviation network was important enough to American to force out the other airlines, even if it made a loss on that specific route.
Overall, aviation networks are really interesting due to there being networks within networks, that is, each airline having their own network competing with the other airline’s networks on the larger “aviation” network. Hopefully more will be discussed on how these work and how these networks have power over each other through the edges and nodes that lie on each of them.