Universal bursty behavior in the air transportation system

TL;DR

This paper reveals that airplane arrivals at hub airports universally exhibit bursty, heavy-tailed inter-arrival times following a power-law distribution, driven by the hub-and-spoke network structure and airline transit strategies.

Contribution

It demonstrates the universal power-law behavior in air traffic and introduces a simple model explaining this burstiness based on network structure and operational strategies.

Findings

Airplane arrival times follow a power-law distribution with exponent 2.5.

The hub-and-spoke network structure underpins the bursty behavior.

A simple model captures the mechanism behind the observed burstiness.

Abstract

Social activities display bursty behavior characterized by heavy-tailed inter-event time distributions. We examine the bursty behavior of airplanes' arrivals in hub airports. The analysis indicates that the air transportation system universally follows a power-law inter-arrival time distribution with an exponent $\alpha=2.5$ and an exponential cutoff. Moreover, we investigate the mechanism of this bursty behavior by introducing a simple model to describe it. In addition, we compare the extent of the hub-and-spoke structure and the burstiness of various airline networks in the system. Remarkably, the results suggest that the hub-and-spoke network of the system and the carriers' strategy to facilitate transit are the origins of this universality.