Marie Camara

Business problem

The airline faced an urgent operational crisis in the latter half of 2024, characterized by severe reliability gaps and intense margin pressure:

Reliability Deficit: An analysis of 10,000 flights operating between July 1, 2024, and December 30, 2024, revealed a concerning on-time performance (OTP) rate of only 42%. During this peak travel period, bottlenecks at high-density hubs significantly disrupted the network, leading to substantial declines in passenger satisfaction and escalating operational recovery costs.

Margin Erosion: Operating margins for this period were fragile at just 5.39%. Severe delays exceeding 90 minutes immediately erased margins due to passenger rebooking penalties and ground fines.

Methodology & Tools Used

Built an end-to-end data pipeline using Python (Google Colab) for data cleaning and exploratory analysis, SQL Server to manage multi-variable transactional databases, and Power BI to deliver an executive decision-intelligence dashboard.

Key Deliverables

Key KPIs:

• On-Time Performance (OTP)
• Profit Margin %
• Total Revenue
• Total Operational Cost
• Total Flight

Key Findings:

• Congestion at primary hubs during specific peak windows (like Paris CDG between 08:00–10:00) drove the network’s structural delays, rather than fleet age or weather.
• Financial overhead represented 55% of total spend. Improving OTP by 10% would boost operating margins by 0.75%, pushing the airline toward the IATA global sustainable benchmark of 8.00%.

Strategic Recommendations

• Implement real-time ground logistics tracking via Power BI to bridge the 42% reliability gap.
• Adjust flight scheduling to de-risk high-density slots.
• Run granular cost-per-flight benchmarking across different aircraft fleets.