Reference no: EM132223856

About the Company

Borrasca Airlines is a regional airline whose primary mission is to service customers flying into and out of the central Oklahoma region via Will Rodgers World Airport in Oklahoma City. We are a very young airline, having first taken to the air on March 8, 2014, with our inaugural flight from Oklahoma City to Orange County’s John Wayne Airport in the first of our brand new Embraer ERJ-175 aircraft. Since that time, we have added dozens of routes and several more aircraft, now flying an all-economy class fleet of 10 aircraft.

Service

We pride ourselves on the quality of the in-flight experience. All of our aircraft are fewer than three years old. Further, we provide customers an industry-leading 32-inches of pitch in our economy seats. We also offer customers the only regularly scheduled, non-stop flights between Oklahoma City and a host of destinations, including San Diego, Boston, and Orlando. By focusing on our core market, Borrasca is able to provide the sort of friendly and efficient service that one would expect from Oklahoma’s home airline.

Pricing

In order to maintain this focus and to lower costs, we sell tickets for non-stop flights only. This means that we’re not hiding additional cost in our airfares that would result from flying more passenger-miles to connect two cities. By flying customers directly from OKC to Oakland (rather than requiring a layover in Dallas or Denver), we save on fuel and other overhead costs; this results in cost savings that our customers see in their ticket prices.

We’re also more than happy to help customers get from point-to-point with a stop-over in OKC, but the prices we charge fairly reflects both legs of the flight (e.g., a customer flying from Boston to Albuquerque via OKC is charged the price of a ticket from Boston to OKC as well as the price of a ticket from OKC to Albuquerque). While this is not the focus of our business, many customers enjoy the efficient experience of changing planes at Will Rodgers and, in many cases, our fares are competitive or even less expensive than those of our competitors.

Borrasca is also the first in the industry to introduce “flat fares”. No longer must customers check fares on a daily basis (or even more frequently!) to see whether the airlines are finally advertising reasonable fares. Our fares start low and, once posted for a given flight, don’t change. Not ready to buy your ticket today? No problem, so long as there’s still room on the flight tomorrow, your price won’t have changed.

But We Need Help…

In its brief existence, Borrasca has made a name for itself as an innovator in the airline industry. We fly non-stop to more destinations from OKC than any other airline and the word is getting out. That said, we also know there may be ways in which we can improve by saving costs, optimizing pricing, and/or increasing our passenger loads and aircraft utilization. This is where you come in and this is where we hope you can help us become a stronger, faster-growing, and more-profitable airline.

We are providing a slice of our database. This includes information about all of our aircraft, all of our routes, all of our destinations, and flight-by-flight results for every scheduled departure in June 2015, a very representative month for us (i.e., what happened in June is similar to what has happened and what we expect to happen in other months of the year). We are asking you to use this data to help us by responding to the following items:

In addition to the data provided, identify for us two additional data points that would help you help us. Also, let us know how those data points would be helpful (i.e., what you might be able to do if only those data points were recorded and provided).

Analyze the data to generate three insights/recommendations. For each of these insights, describe the data used, your analysis of it, and what decision should be made as a result. The more potentially impactful and well-reasoned, the better.

Borrasca has already signed an agreement to begin leasing an ERJ 190 aircraft starting on November 1. Use data from the database to recommend how to utilize this new aircraft. Be explicit with your recommendations, for instance including any “knock-on effects” that may be felt in the way other flights and other aircraft in the fleet are currently utilized.

Further Details

The following details will be important for you to consider in completing this request:

Each field is described within the “Design View” in Access under the Description header. Data Types for each field may also be found there.

Unfortunately, due to privacy issues internally at Borrasca, we can’t share with you our full cost basis. However, to enable you to make reasonable recommendations, consider that any Q400 flight that is 50% full is profitable and that any ERJ flight that is 60% full is profitable.

The following major U.S. airports do not allow take-offs or landings between the hours of 12 AM and 6 AM local time (note that, in the database, all times are central time):

Aspen

Orange County – John Wayne

San Diego

San Jose

Washington Reagan National

Westchester County – White Plains

Borrasca does not currently have authorization to fly international routes. We do not expect this to change in the foreseeable future (i.e., suggesting international routes would not be useful for us).

Deliverable

Deliverable should consist of a Powerpoint presentation of no more than eight slides to consist of:

Title Slide

One slide for each additional data point recommended (Item 1; = 2 slides total).

One slide for EACH data- and analysis-based recommendation/insight (Item 2; = 3 slides total)

Up to two slides for the recommended course of action to take as a result of acquiring the ERJ 190 aircraft (Item 3). If recommendations require additional detail (e.g., if the flight plans for several aircraft are affected), an additional supporting document may be included as well, although the recommendation should be satisfactorily explained within the slide deck.

Link to video or video file of the recorded presentation.

Be sure that the slides in the deck are explicit enough that the information conveyed does not require further explanation. Slides should be professional and engaging for Borrasca’s C-level executives (e.g., show data in an accessible and meaningful way; data visualization using Tableau).

The deliverable will be evaluated on:

The quality of recommendations (e.g., degree of critical thinking, accurate use of data, value of recommendation, clarity of recommendation).

The quality and clarity of the recorded presentation (please use appropriate visualizations and no more than 15 minutes of recording). If you plan to post the presentation in YouTube, please make it private and share it only with me.