Analysis of Flight Disruption Data to Determine Problem Areas Utilizing Database Applications

Abstract

Flight delays represent a significant issue to airline profits and passenger satisfaction. Many factors can lead to a flight being delayed and/or cancelled. To compound the issue, COVID restrictions have created a shortage of skilled, willing labor and a disturbance in the supply chain. All aspects of air travel have been affected. For example, aircraft maintenance and new plane constructions have increased lead times due to parts unavailability. Mass layoffs or early retirements as a knee-jerk response to reduced travel in 2020 has exacerbated the problem. Pilot strikes protesting mandates led to mass flight cancellations in 2021. The study will evaluate flight delays, cancellations, and incident data with the goal of visualizing which airports, airlines, cities, or states are experiencing the highest number of flight disruptions relative to others. In the era of new technological development, database applications are commonly used for data analysis to allow pattern recognition and large data distribution and organization. This study will mainly serve the purpose of flight data retrieval, the compilation of data and database design and finally output data visualizations. The outcome of the research will be presented in a user-friendly interface where the user can easily generate visualizations which can be used to analyze flight delay information.