Impacts of the halt of ITA flight operations on the Brazilian Multiplex Air Transportation Network

Resumo

The bankruptcy of Avianca Brasil, the COVI-19 outbreak and the sudden halt of operations of
Itapemirim Airlines in 2021 changed the topology of the Brazilian Air Transportation Network in past years. The
effect was the reduction in the number of network layers and the network concentration. The aim of this paper was
to characterize structural properties and evaluate changes in the Brazilian air network after the halt of operations
of Itapemirim airline using a multilayer complex network. The multilayer approach considering the weight of
interactions makes the network description more detailed than the usual monolayer analysis. We used data related
to passenger traffic from November 2021 and January 2022 and each network layer represents an airline. The
proprieties and centrality measures were used for Brazilian network characterization, which concentrated into four
layers. Gol and Passaredo increased their market share and operating airports while Gol became the biggest market
share. The number of routes increased for all airlines, especially Gol which increased by 24%. Gol became the
densest layer with the minimum mean path length probably because ITA’s layer had the highest correlation with
Gol and edges overlapping. Results suggest Gol may have had the best strategy to incorporate the ITA’s pent-up
demand.