Ebola, flight schedules and how the industry can be smarter with travel data

We’re so used to hearing the buzz words Big Data being used in almost any context these days.

Whether it’s airlines using the data to enhance the passenger experience, dating companies using it to match potential couples or start-ups using big data to grow and promote their business, the idea of traditional data has taken a back seat.

When you think of flight schedules data, what do you think of? Holidays; delays; arrivals and departures; airfares; maybe on-time performance?

What you probably don’t think of is items on the news agenda, foreign governments, satellites in space – or Ebola.

We think of aviation data a lot, and know how useful and wide-ranging it can be.

Now, Ebola is an example of a global news story that picked up a lot of momentum once people started looking at the data behind the story – specifically in this case flight schedules and traffic data.

All of a sudden who flies where, when and how often became sought-after international data.

The press started to reach out to OAG with requests for data in August, and when Ebola really hit the headlines towards the end of the summer and the beginning of October (with the infection and ultimate death of the first American to be infected with the disease, Thomas Eric Duncan, and the first European, Spanish nurse Teresa Romero Ramos) this marked the point at which suddenly everybody was talking about it.

These press requests ranged from detailing the number of flights in and out of West Africa over the summer, to how those numbers compared to 2013, to what connecting flights these original passengers could have got on at any given time.

One group of scientists even used our data to suggest that ‘airport screenings may not be enough to stop the deadly virus spreading to the UK’.

- Read the full article at: http://www.tnooz.com/article/ebola-flight-schedules-travel-data/#sthash.5yD7TSnY.dpuf