Visualizing the Impact of Severe Weather Disruptions to Air Transportation

When flight schedules are disrupted due to severe weather, operations must be restored to normal, expeditiously and efficiently. The restoration of airline operations during a severe weather disruption involves the analysis and interpretation of very large data sets containing flight and weather data. The principle goal of this paper is to introduce a visualization of flight and weather data. While there are currently a number of programs being used to evaluate large data sets, this paper uses Tableau and Excel visualization software. The purpose of this visualization analysis is to identify trends that could have assisted the airline decision-makers to restore operations during Hurricane Matthew. The results of this analysis provide an overview for decisionmakers to use during future severe weather events.