  In this paper we analyze the gravity model in the world passenger
air-transport network. We show that in the standard form the model is
inadequate to correctly describe the relationship between passenger flows and
typical geo-economic variables that characterize connected countries. We
propose a model of transfer flights which allows to exploit these discrepancies
to discover hidden subflows in the network. We illustrate its usefulness by
retrieving the distance coefficient in the gravity model which is one of the
determinants of the globalization process. Finally, we discuss the correctness
of the presented approach by comparing the distance coefficient to several well
known economical events.
