Department of geography, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, Shandong, China.
PLoS One. 2024 Apr 9;19(4):e0301461. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0301461. eCollection 2024.
The spread of the COVID-19 had profoundly affected the development of the air transportation. In order to determine the changes in air transportation volume associated with the development of the epidemic, this paper takes Southwest China as the study area. Monthly data and methods, such as the coefficient of variation, rank-size analysis and spatial matching index, were applied. The results found that: (1) during 2020-2022, there was a positive relationship between passenger volume and epidemic development, while freight volume increased for most airports in the first quarter of 2020-2022, particularly in the eastern region; (2) From the perspective of changes in air transportation volume under the development of the COVID-19, among various types of airports, the changes in transportation volume of main trunk airports were more significant than those of regional feeder airports in remote areas; (3) however, under the influence of the epidemic, main trunk airports still exhibited stronger attraction in passenger volume. That is to say, the passengers who chose to travel by air still tended to choose the main trunk airports and formed the agglomeration distribution pattern which around high-level airports in the provincial capital. Whereas the freight volume had a tendency of equalization among airports in Southwest China; (4) Over the course of time, the consistency of the spatial distribution of the number of cases and the passenger or freight volume in southwest China gradually increased. Among them, the spatial matching rate of the passenger volume and the number of COVID-19 cases was always higher than that of the cases and freight volume, which might indicate that there was a stronger correlation relationship. Therefore, it is proposed that the construction of multi-center airport system should be strengthened, the resilience of the route network for passenger transportation should be moderately enhanced, and the risk-resistant capacity of mainline airports and airports in tourist cities should be upgraded, so as to provide references for the orderly recovery of civil aviation and regional development.
新冠疫情的传播对航空运输的发展产生了深远的影响。为了确定与疫情发展相关的航空运输量的变化，本文以中国西南地区为研究区域。运用变异系数、位序-规模分析和空间匹配指数等月度数据和方法。结果表明：（1）2020-2022 年期间，客流量与疫情发展呈正相关关系，而货运量在 2020-2022 年第一季度大部分机场均有所增加，尤其是东部地区；（2）从疫情发展下航空运输量的变化来看，在各种类型的机场中，干线机场的运输量变化比偏远地区的区域支线机场更为显著；（3）然而，在疫情的影响下，干线机场在客流量方面仍表现出较强的吸引力。也就是说，选择乘机出行的旅客仍倾向于选择干线机场，并形成以省会高等级机场为核心的集聚分布格局。而货运量在西南地区各机场之间呈现出均衡化的趋势；（4）随着时间的推移，中国西南地区病例数量和旅客或货运量的空间分布一致性逐渐增加。其中，旅客量与新冠病例数量的空间匹配率始终高于病例数量和货运量的空间匹配率，这可能表明两者之间存在更强的相关性。因此，建议加强多中心机场体系建设，适度增强旅客运输航线网络的弹性，提升干线机场和旅游城市机场的抗风险能力，为民航有序恢复和区域发展提供参考。
