title: Universal bursty behavior in the air transportation system.
abstract: Social activities display bursty behavior characterized by heavy-tailed interevent time distributions. We examine the bursty behavior of airplanes' arrivals in hub airports. The analysis indicates that the air transportation system universally follows a power-law interarrival time distribution with an exponent α=2.5 and an exponential cutoff. Moreover, we investigate the mechanism of this bursty behavior by introducing a simple model to describe it. In addition, we compare the extent of the hub-and-spoke structure and the burstiness of various airline networks in the system. Remarkably, the results suggest that the hub-and-spoke network of the system and the carriers' strategy to facilitate transit are the origins of this universality.
authors.affiliation: Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan.
authors.forename: Hidetaka
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ito
authors.affiliation: Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8904, Japan.
authors.forename: Katsuhiro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nishinari