The Prediction of Flight Delay: Big Data-driven Machine Learning Approach

Nowadays, Hong Kong International Airport faces the issues of saturation and overload. The difficulties of selecting taxiways and reducing the lead time at the runway holding position are the severe consequences that appeared from increasing the number of passengers and increased cargo movement to Hong Kong International Airport but without constructing a new runway. This paper is primarily about predicting flight delays by using machine learning methodologies. The prediction results of several machine learning approaches are compared and analyzed thoroughly by using real data from the Hong Kong International Airport. The findings and recommendations from this paper are valuable to the aviation and insurance industries. Better planning of the airport system can be established through predicting flight delays.