The enormous economic impact of air transportation networks on a local, national, and international level has created an interest for further investments and increased the complexity of the global air transport network . The increased number of worldwide airport passengers and of the aircraft movements and also of the international airport cargo shipments is evident . Therefore, the functionality of this complex air transport network is very important and requires to be investigated and evaluated for identifying the airports that appear to be critical to this network . However, besides the economic benefits that air transport network is offering in local, national and international level through their services (shipments of goods and transport of passengers) play an ever-increasing role in safeguarding global health security . This paper investigated the global air transport network for identifying the airports that may constitute a public health event of international concern from infectious diseases (e.g . COVID-19). In detail, critical airports, in terms of centrality measures (e.g . Closeness, Degree, Betweenness, and Page Rank Centrality) were identified and addressed by pointing them to global authorities for suggesting and implementing routine prevention and control measures for possible future disease outbreaks.