Exploring the Sources of Centrality in the Turkish Domestic Airport Network

Abstract

Air passenger transportation in Turkey has been in rapid development since the mid-1980s due to the increasing investments in infrastructure and deregulating policies. This paper analyzed the network performances of Turkish airports and assessed the evolution from 2012 to 2020, from both topological and spatial perspectives. Unweighted and weighted graphs based on flight frequencies were used to determine airport centrality. Sabiha Gökçen (SAW) was defined as the most central airport in the domestic network and airport centrality showed significant improvement during the observation period. The weighted graph recorded significant losses in the centrality performances of airports, excluding eigenvector, during the pandemic process. Exogenous sources of airport centrality were also examined using Gradient Boosting Modeling. Results demonstrated the importance of the population and economic strength of the city in airport centrality, the decisive role of tourism demand and international flights on betweenness centrality, and the necessity of passenger terminal size on eigenvector centrality.

Keywords

• Complex network
• Turkish airport system
• Airport centrality
• Gradient Boosting Modeling

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