Measuring Growth in Business Aviation
Fuel burn potential as a measure of growth does not seem to have many champions. Initially I was very skeptical. It seemed impossible (or very boring) to update fuel burn rates for over 3000 aircraft types listed in ICAO/FAA book of contractions, although the prospect of calling over 4200 airports each week for actual fuel pump figures was worse. We decided to focus on actual flight data from an FAA data feed and sort the aircraft types by flight counts, so about 675 types currently active. Once we separated the active three letter air operator IDs (274 Commercial and 433 BizAv), we created categories to group the aircraft type for some generic fuel burn figures, while researching manufacturer fuel burn rates at cruise for the most active types. This gets us to a much better overall calculation with far fewer updates required.
Tracking changes to overall departures helps, however with the flight time to destination and fuel consumption rates by aircraft type we calculate the minimum amount of fuel needed to operate the flight. Of course, this does not track actual real world issues like tankering, max speed, passenger count, load or altitude restrictions.
WALL OF NUMBERS
Data visualization tools like Tableau make it easier to look at large datasets and identify issues, then reduce the info down to tell a story. For some, a transition to a familiar spreadsheet format is where it starts. We want to show our math, explain the numbers, build trust and establish the credibility of the data and us, as experts in the field.
In the data visualization above, we have a big wall of numbers. We have added some color to highlight fuel consumption estimates by category over a 13 month period. This allows for Month over Month comparisons and Month over Same Month Last Year.
SO WHAT
So, what does this mean? By measuring fuel consumption estimates, we can dive very deep into the data and find interesting stories. We have developed a consistent method for measuring the value and contribution of over 16 million flight records. This allows us to determine if an airport is keeping pace within their market area and the US National Airspace.
THE BOTTOM LINE
The data above shows an increase of 15M gallons of fuel, an increase of only 26,000 flights and 2000 less aircraft call signs (Oct 2019 vs Oct 2018). All aircraft categories are showing growth, except for single engine piston and helicopters.
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