Airline Departure Delay Prediction

As any frequent flier is no doubt aware, flight delays and cancellations are a largely inevitable part of commercial air travel. In the past ten years, only twice have more than 80% of commercial flights arrived on-time or ahead of schedule. Punctuality is an issue for all major carriers, with some struggling more than others: through September 2008, American Airlines flights were on time just 66.9% of the time, bottoming out at 58.8% on-time in the month of June. In many cases, the causes for delays are unpredictable. For example, as of September 30, 2008, 24.6% of flights were delayed; of these delays, 43% can be traced back to inclement weather. But in many other cases, historical data would suggest that some flights are far more likely to be delayed than others, even without taking present or future weather conditions into consideration. The airline itself is an obvious predictor of the chance that a flight is delayed; as mentioned previously, American Airlines often has one of the highest percentages of delayed flights among all carriers, while Southwest Airlines consistently beats the national averages for punctuality. Despite the extreme complexity of flight patterns in the United States, there are many factors that do allow us to gauge the likelihood of a flight being delayed. The aim of this project is to use large historical datasets to make predictions about the punctuality of future flights far in advance, e.g. for a customer in the process of purchasing tickets for a future flight.