Q: I am having real difficulty thinking about the maximum arrival acceptance and maximum departure rates. I not sure based on the data what to use to estimate these rates. One thought is to consider the taxi-in and taxi-out times and see when they seem reasonable and when they seem excessive. Do you have any thoughts about how to address these questions?

A: Look at the number of arrivals and departures in a sample of 15 minute periods and take the maximum. You could decide which periods to sample by seeing where the daily maximum of arrivals and departures typically are found - look in detail at a few days. And on those days, taxi-in and taxi-out times would be a good first step in helping to guide you to the congested periods of arrivals and departures.

Q: Predictably, a great deal of conversation about the case study has occured since class on Friday. Some of it made me wonder if I could focus my analysis on a specific type of flight, such a commuter flights to cities like New York (3) Philadelphia (1), Baltimore-Washington (4+) and others (Albany? Pittsburgh?). I have been thinking about those short service flights which pose a very different challenge with respect to ground vs. holding pattern delay (a la Odoni's paper). I'm interested in the competition in modes on such commuter paths (obviously NYC-BOS is really the only feasible one) and I thought an interesting spin on the assignment would be to look at alternatives and how that could possibly affect the modal split with the proposed high speed rail between boston and new york. I'm not suggesting that I'd ignore the BOS-SJC data, for example, and I can certainly cover the other points, but if you are open to flexibility, this would be a preference. If this would cause conflict or anything in the grading process, I certainly understand. I have NO problem with status quo! Just being imaginative:) Let me know what you think, or let me know if you need me to more precisley define the problem I'd like to investigate with the data.

A: It's fine to focus the bulk of your analysis toward short flights, if you do a thorough job. As you mention, you should not ignore other flights. So I would recommend some analysis of the longer flights, which you could roughly group by distance. For example, one group might consist of cross-country flights to and from LAX, SFO, SJC, etc.; another group might be DFW, DEN, MCO, MIA, etc.; another group might be ORD, ATL, etc.,; and then compare these flights to those to and from the cities you mention.

Q: What airline is HP?

A: America West