Currently, flight delays are common and they propagate from an originating flight to connecting flights, leading to large disruptions in the overall schedule. These disruptions cause massive economic losses, affect airlines' reputations, waste passengers' time and money, and directly impact the environment. This study adopts a network science approach for solving the delay propagation problem by modeling and analyzing the flight schedules and historical operational data of an airline. We aim to determine the most disruptive airports, flights, flight-connections, and connection types in an airline network. Disruptive elements are influential or critical entities in an airline network. They are the elements that can either cause (airline schedules) or have caused (historical data) the largest disturbances in the network. An airline can improve its operations by avoiding delays caused by the most disruptive elements. The proposed network science approach for disruptive element analysis was validated using a case study of an operating airline. The analysis indicates that potential disruptive elements in a schedule of an airline are also actual disruptive elements in the historical data and they should be considered to improve operations. The airline network exhibits small-world effects and delays can propagate to any part of the network with a minimum of four delayed flights. Finally, we observed that passenger connections between flights are the most disruptive connection type. Therefore, the proposed methodology provides a tool for airlines to build robust flight schedules that reduce delays and propagation.

翻译：目前，航班延误现象普遍存在，且会从初始航班传播至转接航班，导致整体航班计划出现大规模中断。这些中断不仅造成巨额经济损失、影响航空公司声誉、浪费旅客的时间与金钱，还会对环境产生直接影响。本研究采用网络科学方法，通过建模分析航空公司的航班计划及历史运行数据来解决延误传播问题，旨在识别航空公司网络中最具破坏性的机场、航班、航班连接以及连接类型。破坏性元素是航空公司网络中具有影响力或关键性的实体，它们可能是造成（航班计划中）或已经造成（历史数据中）网络最大扰动的要素。航空公司可通过规避由最具破坏性元素引发的延误来优化运营。所提出的破坏性元素分析网络科学方法已通过某运营航空公司的案例研究得到验证。分析表明，航空公司航班计划中潜在的破坏性元素在历史数据中同样表现为实际破坏性元素，应将二者纳入考量以改善运营。该航空公司网络具有小世界效应，且延误仅需通过四个连续延误航班即可传播至网络任意部分。最后，我们观察到旅客航班连接是最具破坏性的连接类型。因此，本方法为航空公司构建能够减少延误及其传播的稳健航班计划提供了实用工具。