Network bipartivity and the transportation efficiency of European passenger airlines

The analysis of the structural organization of the interaction network of a complex system is central to understand its functioning. Here, we focus on the analysis of the bipartivity of graphs. We first introduce a mathematical approach to quantify bipartivity and show its implementation in general and random graphs. Then, we tackle the analysis of the transportation networks of European airlines from the point of view of their bipartivity and observe significant differences between traditional and low cost carriers. Bipartivity shows also that alliances and major mergers of traditional airlines provide a way to reduce bipartivity which, in its turn, is closely related to an increase of the transportation efficiency. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.