New Perspectives on Airline Booking Data

In cooperation with Laurie Garrow (Georgia Institute of Technology), Sebastian Vock currently develop new, data-driven perspectives on airline booking data. By comparing booking distributions from itineraries offered at different times, for different routes, and by different carriers, we search for patterns in the market structure. By mining a data set provided by the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), we analyze several hundred origin-destination-carrier combinations and several thousand itineraries. The goal is to develop a cluster analysis of booking distributions as a measurement for market similarity that is capable of overcoming a priori assumptions about market differentiation. Further, we aim to develop an approach of computing decision trees from these market clusters. These trees will offer insight to the relevance of geographic and temporal characteristics.