Modeling Changes in Connectivity at U.S. Airports: A Small Community Perspective

second in a series of papers written under the umbrella of the MIT Small Community Air Service White Paper series. The aim of the paper series is to examine and analyze the past, current, and anticipated future trends of small community air service in the United States. The series is intended for a general audience of airline and airport executives, aviation policy makers, the news media, and anyone with an interest in the availability of commercial air service at the nation's smaller airports. The authors of this paper series hope that these reports will serve to inform the policy debate with relevant and accurate statistical analysis, such that those responsible for deciding the future of small community air service will do so armed with factual basis for their actions. The authors of the MIT Small Community Air Service White Paper series are members of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's International Center for Air Transportation, one of the nation's premier centers for aviation, airline, and airport research. Financial support for study authors has been provided in part by the MIT Airline Industry Consortium, an interdisciplinary group of airlines, airport councils, manufacturers, suppliers, policy makers, and advocacy groups dedicated to improving the state of the practice of air transportation research in the United States. However, any views or analyses presented in this and all future reports are the sole opinions of the authors and do not reflect the positions of MIT Airline Industry Consortium members or MIT. Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank Peter Belobaba and the members of the MIT Airline Industry Consortium for their helpful comments and suggestions during the completion of this study. As the pace of globalization has increased in recent years, commercial air service that provides connections to the global air transportation network has become increasingly important for economic, social, and demographic reasons. While air connectivity is important for communities of all sizes, research has suggested that small communities can obtain significant economic benefits from well-connected commercial air service (Button et al. 2010, Mukkala and Tervo 2012, Kanafani and Abbas 1987). However, recent work (Wittman and Swelbar 2013) has shown that small-and mid-sized airports have been disproportionally affected by cuts in commercial air service in the U.S. over the past six years. There is currently no industry-standard metric to assess an airport's connection to the global air transportation system. This creates challenges for airport managers and policy-makers …