The Essential Air Service (EAS) Program in the United States has provided government-subsidized air service to many small and rural communities for several decades. A program expectation is that it should provide service in light of prevailing market conditions. This paper assesses EAS during the height of the SARS CoV-2 (CoV2) pandemic from three interrelated perspectives: the program in aggregate, individual communities, and EAS connecting hubs. Using a combination of methods, including complex network analysis, we find that, in aggregate, EAS airports performed better than non-EAS airports in preserving seat capacity. However, there was variation in performance between individual EAS communities in particular and some distinct regional geographic patterns in general. In addition, we found substantial variation in the hubs' performance, which connect EAS to the U.S. National Air System.

几十年来，美国的基本航空服务 (EAS) 计划为许多小型和农村社区提供政府补贴的航空服务。一个计划的期望是它应该根据当前的市场条件提供服务。本文从三个相互关联的角度评估了 SARS CoV-2 (CoV2) 大流行期间的 EAS：总体计划、单个社区和 EAS 连接枢纽。使用包括复杂网络分析在内的多种方法的组合，我们发现总体而言，EAS 机场在保留座位容量方面的表现优于非 EAS 机场。然而，个别 EAS 社区之间的表现存在差异，一般而言，某些不同的区域地理模式之间存在差异。此外，我们发现集线器的性能存在很大差异，