Stakeholder : We are representing Quantas Airlines, one of Australia’s largest airline companies, in this
project.

Business objective : Our task here is to forecast the number of aircraft that Quantas needs to lease in order to satisfy all its passenger and cargo demand.

Inputs : The inputs that we have are the number of passengers and the amount of cargo (freight and mail) that was handled by Australian airports every month for the last 30 years.

Data mining problem : Since the typical lead time for aircraft procurement is about 2 years, we need to forecast the number of passengers and the amount of cargo that will be flown 2 years hence. Given that we know the market share of Quantas in the Australian aircraft industry, we can calculate how much of the forecasted traffic will be handled by Quantas, thereby leading to an estimate for the number of aircraft Quantas needs. (assuming Quantas has a homeogeneous fleet with a single seat class).