How transfer flights shape structure of the airline network

In this paper we analyze the gravity model in the world passenger air-transport network. We show that in the standard form the model is inadequate to correctly describe the relationship between passenger flows and typical geo-economic variables that characterize connected countries. We propose a model of transfer flights which allows to exploit these discrepancies to discover hidden subflows in the network. We illustrate its usefulness by retrieving the distance coefficient in the gravity model which is one of the determinants of the globalization process. Finally, we discuss the correctness of the presented approach by comparing the distance coefficient to several well known economical events.