Comparison of Models Used to Predict Flight Delays at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport

Delays in flights have negative socio-economics effects on passengers, airlines and airports, resulting to huge economic loses. Therefore, their prediction is crucial during the decision-making process for all players of aviation industry for proper management. The development of accurate prediction models for flight delays depend on the complexity of air transport system and airport infrastructure, hence may be country specific. However, there exists no prediction models tailored to Kenyan aviation industry. Hence there is need to develop prediction models amenable to Kenya aviation conditions. The objective of this study was to compare the prediction power of the developed models. Secondary data from Jomo Kenya International Airport (JKIA) was used in this study. The data collected included the day of the flight (Monday to Sunday), the month (January to December), the airline, the flight class (domestic or international), season (summer or winter), capacity of the aircraft, flight ID (tail number) and whether the flight had flown at night or during the day. The analysis of the data was done using R- software. Three models, Logistic model, Support Vector Machine model and Random Forest model, were fitted. The strength and utility of the models was determined using bias-variance learning curves. The study revealed that the models predicted delays with different accuracies. The Random Forest model had a prediction accuracy of 68.99% while the Support Vector Machine model (SVM) had an accuracy of 68.62% and the Logistic Regression model had an accuracy of 66.18%. The Random Forest model outperformed the SVM and Logistic Regression with accuracies of 0.37% and 2.71% respectively. The SVM and Random Forest do not assume probability distribution of the response under investigation, probably indicating why they performed better than the logistic regression. The study recommends application of Random Forest model to predict flight delays at JKIA.