This paper studies the spatiotemporal variation of the worldwide air transportation network (WATN) induced by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The variations are captured from four perspectives: passenger throughput, network connectivity, airport centrality, and international connections. Further, this work also considers both global and local connectivity-based metrics for the network analysis. Supported by real-world data, we show that the performance of the WATN has experienced a dynamic pattern of decline and recovery in 2020. Interestingly, the network metrics undergo tremendous variations in a very short period after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a pandemic, with the number of flights and connections dropping by more than 40% within only the first four weeks. Intuitively, the passenger throughput's changing rate is highly correlated to confirmed cases' growth rate during the early period of the COVID-19 outbreak. However, the air transport response to the pandemic condition is very diverse among different countries. The major airports in the WATN fluctuate gradually in different pandemic stages, which is further influenced by the domestic pandemic situation that restricts airport operations. Also, the restoration speed of local connectivity is faster than that of global connectivity because the recovery of international aviation is geographically dependent on different policies of travel restriction, conditional openings, and the number of COVID-19 cases. The analysis deepens our understanding to formulate bilateral policies for pandemic-induced ATN design and management.

本文研究了 2020 年 COVID-19 大流行引发的全球航空运输网络（WATN）的时空变化。这些变化从四个角度进行捕捉：旅客吞吐量、网络连通性、机场中心性和国际联系。此外，这项工作还考虑了基于全局和本地连接的指标来进行网络分析。在现实世界数据的支持下，我们表明 WATN 的性能在 2020 年经历了下降和恢复的动态模式。有趣的是，在世界卫生组织宣布 COVID-19 为一场大流行，仅前四个星期内航班和转机数量就下降了 40% 以上。直观上，在COVID-19爆发初期，旅客吞吐量的变化率与确诊病例的增长率高度相关。然而，不同国家的航空运输对疫情的反应却截然不同。 WATN内主要机场在不同疫情阶段逐渐出现波动，进一步受到国内疫情限制机场运营的影响。此外，本地连接的恢复速度比全球连接的恢复速度更快，因为国际航空的恢复在地理上取决于不同的旅行限制政策、有条件开放和COVID-19病例数。该分析加深了我们对大流行引发的 ATN 设计和管理双边政策制定的理解。