Abstract In order to comprehensively improve the operation and management level of domestic routes of air transport enterprises, this paper studies the domestic routes of air transport enterprises from the perspective of complex networks. Firstly, the domestic route network model of the air transport enterprises is constructed based on the national flight running time. Secondly, the complexity of the airline route network is tested according to the statistical analysis of the small world network model. Thirdly, the robustness of the complex network is studied from the perspectives of random attack and deliberate attack. Finally, based on the research results, the methods and strategies for optimizing the domestic airline route network are proposed.