When we think about airline routes, it is immediately apparent how they form networks. It is clear how concepts from social networks such as triadic closure apply. For example, consider Eastern Airlines in the early 1960s. It adopted the novel idea of hourly shuttle service between New York’s LaGuardia Airport with Boston’s Logan and Washington’s Ronald Reagan Airports in 1961 where passengers would simply show up at the airport to purchase their ticket. With the convenience of hourly service and skyrocketing passenger traffic, there were essentially two very strong edges tied into La Guardia Airport. It was only natural that within one year, in 1962, triadic closure took effect with the Washington to Boston shuttle route added to ease the stress off LaGuardia since direct shuttle service was now available between Logan and Ronald Reagan and connections through New York were no longer necessary. In fact, this is a case of strong triadic closure in New York’s perspective since it had strong links from the strong demand to both Washington and Boston. The new route was beneficial to the expansion of the business and also contributed to the reduction of congestion at La Guardia Airport.

However, a less obvious observation is that network exchange theory concepts are involved as well in the perspective of the cities. Consider the cancellation of flight service from Ithaca to Pittsburgh. Notice that in 2003, Ithaca was struggling with its flight service because of isolation issues. Small cities have this problem because they only have a limited number of feasible edges to link with. For example, it is infeasible to have direct service from Ithaca to London Heathrow due to low demand. Also, low passenger traffic precludes large aircraft from servicing small cities which limit the range of possible destination cities. Thus, Ithaca only has a small number of possible edge links to hub cities. Although there is nothing being officially exchanged, it is clear that the hub cities have the power over the smaller ones because they have centrality and the power to exclude as advantages. Also, the concept of satiation allows them to pick the most profitable routes to maintain service to. Thus, small cities tend to be at a disadvantage because a single route cancellation can wreak havoc. In the case of US Airways, an annual loss of $60,000 in 2003 caused the cancellation of Pittsburgh service and even left the future of Ithaca Airport in doubt with only two destinations left in 2003. Similarly, numerous other regional airports faced similar concerns in 2003. Clearly, the effect at Pittsburgh was less dramatic because numerous other airlines still provide service to many destinations. The city can choose other cities to “trade” with by adding flight service there.

Notice that strong triadic closure played a role in route and business expansion with Eastern Airlines’s shuttle service. However, this cannot apply to small airports. This is because the low passenger traffic precludes any edge to Ithaca from being a strong one. In fact, no mainline jets even service regional airports such as Ithaca. Thus, it won’t be part of any possible triadic closure which makes it very difficult to expand. Besides, who would connect at Ithaca Airport? Lastly, in 2003, with New York and Philadelphia as the only destinations left, those two cities essentially served as gatekeepers to Ithaca which ties in with the network exchange theory since they were essentially given extensive power. They dictated all the possible connections Ithaca flyers could make. However, their power has been reduced today because of Northwest’s service to Detroit which has reduced their power to exclude since passengers have additional options now. Nonetheless, to conclude, it is quite difficult to sustain business at small airports. This article may be from 2003 but small airports across the country face these issues to this day. Currently, Ithaca Airport is not in bad shape since it is not being excluded as severely as in 2003 but exclusion and the lack of power is always a problem for small cities in the game of building airline routes and schedules.

Source: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D01E0DC143FF930A2575BC0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all