Research on the Resilience of Airline Network Considering Ground Transportation of Neighboring Airports Under Cascading Failures

ABSTRACT The phenomenon of “cascading failures” occurs when nodes or edges in a network fail due to their load exceeding capacity, leading to a chain reaction that impacts additional nodes or edges during the load redistribution process, ultimately resulting in system‐wide failures. To alleviate the impact of cascading failures and ensure the resilience of the airline network, we consider the ground transportation modes between neighboring airports and propose an extended airline network (EAN) that integrates ground transportation between neighboring airports. Based on this framework, we explore the time‐varying characteristics of the load at each airport in the network and introduce a travel‐time‐based load redistribution strategy. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods, we conduct experimental simulations based on the on‐time performance data released by the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), focusing on single attacks, continuous attacks, and random attack strategies. The results demonstrate that applying the travel‐time‐based load redistribution strategy within the EAN, which incorporates ground transportation between neighboring airports, effectively reduces the proportion of failed airports and shortens passenger travel time, thereby showcasing the network's strong resilience against cascading failures.