Connectivity

Connectivity of an airport is an indicator of its relative position, and therefore of its competitiveness, within the airport network being considered. A first index of connectivity is based on the average number of flights needed to reach other airports: if airport is directly connected to all the other network airports, its  connectivity index is 1. There are airports reachable by using more than one flight, and in this case we speak of indirect connection, which involves the presence of a connecting airport. In the ranking of the 30 airports with the best global connections (selected on a network that includes 3,875 airports worldwide) there are 2 Italian airports: Fiumicino occupies 17^th place (-4 compared to the previous year) and Malpensa is in 26^th place (unchanged from the previous year), with a connectivity index of 2.66.
A comparison of global and European connectivity indexes (referring to a sample of 471 continental airports) shows how large airports are more concentrated on intercontinental flows, while smaller airports develop a more intense point-to-point network at European level. At European level of connectivity, Malpensa is the airport having gained most positions within the first 30, going from 28th to 19th place (index of 1.90).

Connectivity index of top 10 Italian airports

An indicator giving a more accurate measure of the degree of accessibility to Europe by individual airports is based on minimum travel time to reach other European airports. Travel time includes both flight times and waiting times at intermediate airports (in the event that more than one flight is required to reach a particular destination). For Malpensa airport, the number of linked airports per day was 403, with average travel time of 325 minutes.
Linate airport also shows good connectivity in relation to travel time, connected with 400 airports reachable in an average time of 344 minutes.