Research Article
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Supervised Learning Approaches to Flight Delay Prediction

Year 2020, Volume: 24 Issue: 6, 1223 - 1231, 01.12.2020
https://doi.org/10.16984/saufenbilder.710107

Abstract

Delays in flights and other airline operations have significant consequences in quality of service, operational costs, and customer satisfaction. Therefore, it is important to predict the occurrence of delays and take necessary actions accordingly. In this study, we addressed the flight delay prediction problem from a supervised machine learning perspective. Using a real-world airline operations dataset provided by a leading airline company, we identified optimum dataset features for optimum prediction accuracy. In addition, we trained and tested 11 machine learning models on the datasets that we created from the original dataset via feature selection and transformation. CART and KNN showed consistently good performance in almost all cases achieving 0.816 and 0.807 F-Scores respectively. Similarly, GBM, XGB, and LGBM showed very good performance in most of the cases, achieving F-Scores around 0.810.

Supporting Institution

Research and Development Center of TAV Airports Holding

Thanks

Funding for this work was partially supported by the Research and Development Center of TAV Airports Holding accredited on Turkey - Ministry of Science.

References

  • N. Pyrgiotis, K. M. Malone, and A. Odoni, "Modelling delay propagation within an airport network," Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, vol. 27, pp. 60-75, 2013.
  • J. J. Rebollo and H. Balakrishnan, "Characterization and prediction of air traffic delays," Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, vol. 44, pp. 231-241, 2014.
  • Y. Ding, "Predicting flight delay based on multiple linear regression," in 2nd International Conference on Materials Science, Energy Technology and Environmental Engineering (MSETEE 2017), Zhuhai, China, 2017, pp. 1-8.
  • N. Chakrabarty, "A Data Mining Approach to Flight Arrival Delay Prediction for American Airlines," CoRR, vol. abs/1903.06740, 2019.
  • B. Yu, Z. Guo, S. Asian, H. Wang, and G. Chen, "Flight delay prediction for commercial air transport: A deep learning approach," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, vol. 125, pp. 203-221, 2019.
  • H. Khaksar and A. Sheikholeslami, "Airline delay prediction by machine learning algorithms," Scientia Iranica, vol. 26, pp. 2689-2702, 2017.
  • G. Gui, F. Liu, J. Sun, J. Yang, Z. Zhou, and D. Zhao, "Flight Delay Prediction Based on Aviation Big Data and Machine Learning," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 69, pp. 140-150, 2020.
  • E. Alpaydın, Introduction to Machine Learning, 3rd ed. London, England: The MIT Press, 2014.
  • J. Han and M. Kamber, Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques. USA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2006.
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  • G. Ke, Q. Meng, T. Finley, T. Wang, W. Chen, W. Ma, Q. Ye, and T.-Y. Liu, "LightGBM: a highly efficient gradient boosting decision tree," presented at the Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, Long Beach, California, USA, 2017.
  • A. V. Dorogush, V. Ershov, and A. Gulin, "CatBoost: gradient boosting with categorical features support," CoRR, vol. abs/1810.11363, 2018.
  • W. McKinney, "pandas: a foundational Python library for data analysis and statistics," Python for High Performance and Scientific Computing, vol. 14, 2011.
  • F. Pedregosa, G. Varoquaux, A. Gramfort, V. Michel, B. Thirion, O. Grisel, M. Blondel, P. Prettenhofer, R. Weiss, V. Dubourg, J. Vanderplas, A. Passos, D. Cournapeau, M. Brucher, M. Perrot, and É. Duchesnay, "Scikit-learn: Machine Learning in Python," Journal of Machine Learning Research, vol. 12, pp. 2825-2830, 2011.
Year 2020, Volume: 24 Issue: 6, 1223 - 1231, 01.12.2020
https://doi.org/10.16984/saufenbilder.710107

Abstract

References

  • N. Pyrgiotis, K. M. Malone, and A. Odoni, "Modelling delay propagation within an airport network," Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, vol. 27, pp. 60-75, 2013.
  • J. J. Rebollo and H. Balakrishnan, "Characterization and prediction of air traffic delays," Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, vol. 44, pp. 231-241, 2014.
  • Y. Ding, "Predicting flight delay based on multiple linear regression," in 2nd International Conference on Materials Science, Energy Technology and Environmental Engineering (MSETEE 2017), Zhuhai, China, 2017, pp. 1-8.
  • N. Chakrabarty, "A Data Mining Approach to Flight Arrival Delay Prediction for American Airlines," CoRR, vol. abs/1903.06740, 2019.
  • B. Yu, Z. Guo, S. Asian, H. Wang, and G. Chen, "Flight delay prediction for commercial air transport: A deep learning approach," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, vol. 125, pp. 203-221, 2019.
  • H. Khaksar and A. Sheikholeslami, "Airline delay prediction by machine learning algorithms," Scientia Iranica, vol. 26, pp. 2689-2702, 2017.
  • G. Gui, F. Liu, J. Sun, J. Yang, Z. Zhou, and D. Zhao, "Flight Delay Prediction Based on Aviation Big Data and Machine Learning," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 69, pp. 140-150, 2020.
  • E. Alpaydın, Introduction to Machine Learning, 3rd ed. London, England: The MIT Press, 2014.
  • J. Han and M. Kamber, Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques. USA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2006.
  • J. C. Platt, "Fast training of support vector machines using sequential minimal optimization," in Advances in kernel methods, S. Bernhard, J. C. B. Christopher, and J. S. Alexander, Eds., ed: MIT Press, 1999, pp. 185-208.
  • L. Breiman, "Random Forests," Machine Learning, vol. 45, pp. 5-32, 2001.
  • T. Chen and C. Guestrin, "XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System," presented at the Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, San Francisco, California, USA, 2016.
  • G. Ke, Q. Meng, T. Finley, T. Wang, W. Chen, W. Ma, Q. Ye, and T.-Y. Liu, "LightGBM: a highly efficient gradient boosting decision tree," presented at the Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, Long Beach, California, USA, 2017.
  • A. V. Dorogush, V. Ershov, and A. Gulin, "CatBoost: gradient boosting with categorical features support," CoRR, vol. abs/1810.11363, 2018.
  • W. McKinney, "pandas: a foundational Python library for data analysis and statistics," Python for High Performance and Scientific Computing, vol. 14, 2011.
  • F. Pedregosa, G. Varoquaux, A. Gramfort, V. Michel, B. Thirion, O. Grisel, M. Blondel, P. Prettenhofer, R. Weiss, V. Dubourg, J. Vanderplas, A. Passos, D. Cournapeau, M. Brucher, M. Perrot, and É. Duchesnay, "Scikit-learn: Machine Learning in Python," Journal of Machine Learning Research, vol. 12, pp. 2825-2830, 2011.
There are 16 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Subjects Artificial Intelligence
Journal Section Research Articles
Authors

Mehmet Cemal Atlıoğlu This is me 0000-0003-1289-2715

Mustafa Bolat This is me 0000-0001-8169-0629

Murat Şahin This is me 0000-0002-2866-8796

Volkan Tunalı 0000-0002-2735-7996

Deniz Kılınç 0000-0002-2336-8831

Publication Date December 1, 2020
Submission Date March 27, 2020
Acceptance Date September 11, 2020
Published in Issue Year 2020 Volume: 24 Issue: 6

Cite

APA Atlıoğlu, M. C., Bolat, M., Şahin, M., Tunalı, V., et al. (2020). Supervised Learning Approaches to Flight Delay Prediction. Sakarya University Journal of Science, 24(6), 1223-1231. https://doi.org/10.16984/saufenbilder.710107
AMA Atlıoğlu MC, Bolat M, Şahin M, Tunalı V, Kılınç D. Supervised Learning Approaches to Flight Delay Prediction. SAUJS. December 2020;24(6):1223-1231. doi:10.16984/saufenbilder.710107
Chicago Atlıoğlu, Mehmet Cemal, Mustafa Bolat, Murat Şahin, Volkan Tunalı, and Deniz Kılınç. “Supervised Learning Approaches to Flight Delay Prediction”. Sakarya University Journal of Science 24, no. 6 (December 2020): 1223-31. https://doi.org/10.16984/saufenbilder.710107.
EndNote Atlıoğlu MC, Bolat M, Şahin M, Tunalı V, Kılınç D (December 1, 2020) Supervised Learning Approaches to Flight Delay Prediction. Sakarya University Journal of Science 24 6 1223–1231.
IEEE M. C. Atlıoğlu, M. Bolat, M. Şahin, V. Tunalı, and D. Kılınç, “Supervised Learning Approaches to Flight Delay Prediction”, SAUJS, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 1223–1231, 2020, doi: 10.16984/saufenbilder.710107.
ISNAD Atlıoğlu, Mehmet Cemal et al. “Supervised Learning Approaches to Flight Delay Prediction”. Sakarya University Journal of Science 24/6 (December 2020), 1223-1231. https://doi.org/10.16984/saufenbilder.710107.
JAMA Atlıoğlu MC, Bolat M, Şahin M, Tunalı V, Kılınç D. Supervised Learning Approaches to Flight Delay Prediction. SAUJS. 2020;24:1223–1231.
MLA Atlıoğlu, Mehmet Cemal et al. “Supervised Learning Approaches to Flight Delay Prediction”. Sakarya University Journal of Science, vol. 24, no. 6, 2020, pp. 1223-31, doi:10.16984/saufenbilder.710107.
Vancouver Atlıoğlu MC, Bolat M, Şahin M, Tunalı V, Kılınç D. Supervised Learning Approaches to Flight Delay Prediction. SAUJS. 2020;24(6):1223-31.