Through the study of airport network of China (ANC), composed of 128 airports (nodes) and 1165 flights (edges), we show the topological structure of ANC conveys two characteristics of small worlds, a short average path length (2.067) and a high degree of clustering (0.733). The cumulative degree distributions of both directed and undirected ANC obey two-regime power laws with different exponents, i.e., the so-called double Pareto law. In-degrees and out-degrees of each airport have positive correlations, whereas the undirected degrees of adjacent airports have significant linear anticorrelations. It is demonstrated both weekly and daily cumulative distributions of flight weights (frequencies) of ANC have power-law tails. Besides, the weight of any given flight is proportional to the degrees of both airports at the two ends of that flight. It is also shown the diameter of each subcluster (consisting of an airport and all those airports to which it is linked) is inversely proportional to its density of connectivity. Efficiency of ANC and of its subclusters is measured through a simple definition. In terms of that, the efficiency of ANC’s subclusters increases as the density of connectivity does. ANC is found to have an efficiency of 0.484.

• Received 13 August 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.69.046106