How much of a month's income does it take to connect to the world? For Ireland, the answer is three percent. For Central African Republic, it is 1,984 percent. Runwayindex.org is measuring how much of a country's income does it actually cost to fly?
The Runway Index measures the structural cost of aviation connectivity relative to GDP per capita for every country with an international airport. For each country, it prices one-way economy flights to its seven most economically relevant regional neighbours, selected using a gravity model combining distance and GDP, and to a fixed basket of seventeen global cities representing the world's major financial centres: New York, Mexico City, São Paulo, Lagos, Johannesburg, Cairo, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Sydney. The average fare across both baskets is divided by monthly GDP per capita. The result is a single number that answers the question: what percentage of a month's income does it take to connect to the world?
The inaugural edition covers 170 countries. Here is what the data says.
The top of the table looks like Europe
Of the twenty most connected countries in the world, the overwhelming majority are European. Ireland ranks first, followed by Singapore, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Norway. High incomes, dense route networks, and fierce low-cost competition combine to make the cost of flying structurally low relative to what people earn.
Ireland's top ranking deserves a caveat. Its official GDP per capita of around $140,000 is significantly inflated by multinational profit booking without reflecting what Irish residents actually earn. Adjusted for actual resident incomes, Ireland's score would be lower, though it would likely remain among the most connected countries in the world due to its low-cost carrier Ryanair and its proximity to London.
The more representative top performers are Singapore, Luxembourg, and the Gulf states. UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain break up the European dominance in the top twenty. World-class hub airports, high per capita incomes, and geographic positions at the crossroads of major travel corridors give them an advantage.
1,984: Central African Republic
Central African Republic ranks last among the 170 countries scored in the inaugural edition. Its Runway Index score is 1,984.
That number means that reaching the nearest regional markets and global financial hubs costs the equivalent of 1,984 percent of monthly GDP per capita. Nearly two years of average income. For a single journey.
The two components tell different stories. The Local Score of 1,480 reflects the cost of reaching regional neighbours, already extraordinary by any measure. The Global Score of 2,489 is significantly higher, capturing what it costs to reach the seventeen major financial hub cities that drive global trade and investment. The further from the centre of the global economy, the more punishing the cost. The high cost is due to thin route networks, absent competition, very low incomes, and geographic isolation.
Why it matters
Aviation connectivity is infrastructure for everything else. Trade, investment, talent, capital. The structural cost of that infrastructure varies by a factor of 665 between the most and least connected country in the world. That gap is invisible in standard investment analysis. Nobody had measured it. That is why I built the Runway Index.
The inaugural edition covers 170 countries. The full edition publishes in Q4 2026 at runwayindex.org.