Flight from COVID-19: Multiscale and Multilayer Analyses of the Epidemic-Induced Network Adaptations

Pandemic waves are worldwide disasters that can create long-term disruptions in critical industries. Airline transportation is a crucial industry for the US economy. We empirically study how vital industries such as airlines adapt in response to massive disasters like COVID-19. This paper investigates the changes in the network of the US domestic flights caused by the start of the COVID-19 epidemic. Using a novel dataset, we examine the epidemic-induced network adaptations in the US airline industry and quantify the strength of the flight network’s response to the epidemic network activation. We find that the overall disruption in the flight network is large in size. When considering a natural multilayer structure of the flight network represented by airlines, we find that the COVID-19 epidemic changes the multilayer structure, and some layers are more resilient than others.