  Perturbations of the air transport network have a tremendous impact on many
sectors of activity. Therefore, a better understanding of its robustness to
targeted attacks is essential. The literature reports numerous investigations
at different levels (world, regional, airline) considering various targeted
attack strategies. However, few works consider the mesoscopic organization of
the network. To fill this gap, we rely on the component structure recently
introduced in the network literature. Indeed, the world air transportation
network possesses seven local components capturing the regional flights in
localized areas. Its global component, distributed worldwide, capture the
interregional routes. We investigate the impact of two influential attacks
(Degree, Betweenness) on the world air transportation network at the regional
and inter-regional levels. Results show that the seven regions are isolated one
after the other from the world air transportation network. Additionally,
although the Betweenness attack effectively splits the network, its impact on
regional routes is less pronounced.
