Reachability for airline networks: fast algorithm for shortest path problem with time windows.

Abstract Airline network, including airports as network nodes and flight routes as directed network edges, has a lot of special features such as departure and arrival times, air ticket budget, flight capacity, transportation cost, etc. Thus, analyzing network behavior and service performance for such a network is much more difficult than that for many other networks. In this paper, taking China domestic airline network as a representative, we try to discuss the reachability issue for each airport respectively, which could reflect its regional connectivity level and service quality of civil aviation. More specifically, we evaluate reachability through many features including node degree, betweenness, closeness, etc. To get the values of some features, we design a fast Dijkstra-based all-pair shortest path algorithm with both time and budget requirements, then use Fenwick Tree to further improve the time efficiency. Actually, it is a shortest path problem with time windows and other constraints. Furthermore, we propose a faster solution by reducing the edges in the duplicated graph as a simplification and then provide the time complexity proof. Finally, we implement Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to convert the reachability feature into numerical values for all airports to measure their service qualities precisely. Our results for China domestic airline network with 210 airports and 69,160 flight routes will definitely become a guide to airline companies and civil aviation administration for their further development and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]