Looks at city flight departures vs revenue
For my project I am curious to know how different variables affect city revenue. Individuals or companies that can predict which cities' revenues are growing will be able to better assess many choices such as whether to move to a city, invest in real estate, apply for city loans/grants, etc. I have chosen to look at whether the changes in the number of departing flights from a city from one year to the next can predict changes in revenue from one year to the next. For this project I downloaded large, raw text files (https://www.bts.dot.gov/topics/airlines-and-airports/origin-and-destination-survey-data) containing flight information, including the airport code for all departing flights in a quarter (year). I found which city each of these airports was in (https://www.codediesel.com/data/international-airport-codes-download/), and then downloaded data on city revenues by year (https://www.lincolninst.edu/research-data/data-toolkits/fiscally-standardized-cities/search-database). My hypothesis was that an increase in flights might suggest an increase in commerce or tourism which might lead to an increase in revenue. My findings do not support this hypothesis. This may be because most airports support many surrounding cities. It may also be that I have not looked over a long enough period of time.