Flight Quest
About
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Airline companies are constantly looking for ways to make flight more efficient. From gate conflicts to operational challenges to air traffic management, the dynamics of a flight can change quickly and lead to costly delays.

Fortunately, advancements in real-time big data analysis are changing the course of flights as we know it. Imagine if pilots could augment their decision-making process with "real time business intelligence" — information available in the cockpit that would allow them to make adjustments to their flight patterns.

Several amazing contestants submitted useable and scalable algorithms based on model data that improved flight arrival prediction times by up to 40% saving fuel, cabin crew costs and time. This visualization helps explain just how much saving 2.5 minutes per flight can save an airline. Once the animation is complete, you can create your scenario by changing the airline size and the number of minutes to save.

Variables
# airplanes
medium sized fleet
time savings
minutes saved per arrival
Flight Quest Daily Savings
arrivals
plane
on average, one plane flies 4 times a day
fuel & crew cost savings
thousand dollars
time savings
minutes
Flight Quest Yearly Savings
fuel & crew cost savings
million dollars
time savings
thousand hours
aircraft freed up per year
Create Your Scenario
Minutes Saved
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Based on the model data, the winning algorithms were able to save anywhere between 1 and 5 minutes in flight arrival times. Some of the algorithms used a mixture of gradient boosting and random forest models to predict gate and runway arrivals. Move the slider to another value to see the impact of saving that many minutes.
Airline Size
  • Small
  • Medium
  • Large
Use the slider to change the airline size. A small airline typically consists of 60 airplanes, a medium sized airline is about 120 airplanes and a large is about 710 airplanes.
pacific
mountain
central
eastern