The trans-pacific route is the route group connecting the Asia-Pacific region and the Americas region, which is categorized as long-distance international air traffic. This paper studies the rapidly changing and dynamic trans-pacific air transport network, which has uniqueness in geographic, economic, regulatory and aircraft operation perspectives, by using the past 30 years of air traffic data and network pattern to analyze the factors behind these changes. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the characteristics unique to the trans-pacific routes as well as the commonalities which may apply to other long-distance routes, rather than taking a comprehensive look at the whole world or a local look at only specific countries. This study, as a result, revealed that the impacts by market expansion due to economic growth, technological innovations in aircraft, development of airport infrastructure, and expansion of open skies agreements have contributed to the evolution of the trans-pacific route network over the past 30 years.
