Azul Alternate Analysis AE 398: Global Experience Brazil | Spring 2024
In 2024, I had the opportunity to work on a data analysis project for the Brazilian airline, Azul. This came about by taking an aerospace technical elective that collaborates with Brazilian companies and universities to create international teams of students from both the University of Illinois and the University of São Paulo that work on a problem posed by a Brazilian company. In this year’s iteration of the project, we were given a large database of domestic flights in Brazil that had not landed at their planned destination. When a flight needs to deviate from their planned destination they usually go to one of their two planned alternates airports that are planned before the flight takes off. We were tasked with analyzing the differences between planned alternates and actual alternates and determining whether the current alternate planning is effective. These planned alternate airports are very important because the further of the two dictates how much fuel needs to be carried onboard. If alternates closer to the destination could be planned more frequently, fuel costs could be drastically reduced.
My team decided to zero in on flights scheduled to land at Azul’s three largest hubs. These hubs accounted for the vast majority of scheduled flights and they therefore also accounted for the majority of alternated flights. We created visuals that showed how often the first or second planned alternate was actually used when flying to these hubs. This effectively showed whether the current planning scheme was effective. If the majority of flights diverted from the hub ended up landing at one of the two planned alternates, then the planning was determined to be effective. If, however, the majority of alternated flights landed at a third, non-planned alternate, then the planning weas determined to be ineffective. In the cases of ineffective planning, we identified where the planes were actually landing the majority of the time and recommended that these airports become the priority when planning alternates for that specific hub.
I cannot share the final presentation here as it contains proprietary information of Azul, but I can share some fun pictures from the trip to Brazil to present to Azul and visit the country.
