  Networks are at the core of modeling many engineering contexts, mainly in the
case of infrastructures and communication systems. The resilience of a network,
which is the property of the system capable of absorbing external shocks, is
then of paramount relevance in the applications. This paper deals with this
topic by advancing a theoretical proposal for measuring the resilience of a
network. The proposal is based on the study of the shocks propagation along the
patterns of connections among nodes. The theoretical model is tested on the
real-world instances of two important airport systems in the US air traffic
network; Illinois (including the hub of Chicago) and New York states (with JFK
airport).
