Fifteen years ago it was only fair for the airlines companies to keep record of the ingoing and outgoing flights only. But now let’s imagine a sudden storm hitting the East Coast today. This would imply that several flights will be delayed. Hence keeping up to their standards and adding a value to the every penny the passengers have paid would involve several entailing jobs like determining the flights to be connected with the airline, baggage transfer time, the number of transferring passengers, the flights that are coming from and so on. It naturally means a proliferating amount of big data sifting and shifting from a constellation of different sources. A Boeing 787 alone creates a half a terabyte of data every day. Big data in aviation are useful in many cases such as:

·         Fuel Efficiency- Fuel is the second highest expense for airlines and estimating power has developed to a point where airlines can congregate and process the enormous amounts of data they need to analyze on a per-trip basis. It is hoped that data mining will produce actionable intelligence around decisions such as adding or subtracting flights to routes, setting fuel loads for each aircraft, and selling additional passenger tickets. 

·         Smart Maintenance- The big data, including mechanic write-ups, shop findings and in-flight measurements, helps the airline company to plan equipment maintenance with minimal disturbance to flights.

·         Airline Safety- A data collection and analysis program named Data4Safety has been recently launched by The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA)  to detect risks using a amalgamation of safety reports, in-flight telemetry data, air traffic surveillance information, weather data and so on.

Read more at: https://hortonworks.com/article/how-big-data-in-aviation-is-transforming-the-industry/