San Francisco Airport: How did COVID-19 global pandemic affect travel during March 2020?

Visualization using Tableau Professional Edition 2021.2.2

Purpose of Visualization

The purpose of analyzing and visualizing San Francisco airport information for March 2020 is two-fold:

• The primary purpose is to explore the dataset to tell a story of the flight activity for March 2020, when pandemic was declared. Tableau storytelling approach has been used here, that creates various story points posing inquisitive questions and leads the user through the details, uncovering elements one at a time.
• The secondary purpose is to create a single-page at-a-glance dashboard for San Francisco Airport executives or given stakeholders. In this case the assumption is that a similar style dashboard could be used for appropriate leadership in the organization to track airport flight activity at a high level. Tableau dashboard view has been leveraged here that consolidates individual worksheets.

About the Dataset

The dataset has a total of 88532 rows. The variables/features that will be used to explore and build the story include:

1. Routes: to and fro route information is split as “Route To” and “Route From” field.
2. Date: Since all data is for March 2020, the day part of the month will be extracted to see trends.
3. Geometry coordinates 0,0 / 0,1 (to) will be used to generate point lines, showing visual lines to the destination point.
4. Geometry coordinates 1,0 / 1,1 (from) will be used to generate the line points from SFO.
5. Distance between points (in miles) will be used to show distance between points and total distance travelled between routes.
6. Flight Airline: the flight carrier
7. Gate Number: Split based on 1st character to derive if the flight was international or domestic. A and G are international terminals and the rest are marked as domestic. A calculated field “Flight Type” has been created to determine if the flight is international or domestic based on gate information.

The dataset additionally includes flight number that is not being used for analysis to include in the final story but basic analysis was done for learning purposes.

Data Exploration Topics / Key Questions

The visualization starts with posing a question of whether there were any impacts as a result of COVID-19 pandemic announcement to flight activity in SFO airport. The intent of the data exploration includes exploring the following key questions and identifying interesting patterns or trends along the way. This project was done iteratively as any visual gave room for more questions. The ones within the scope of the current analysis were considered.

We are trying to explain the patterns where possible by correlating it to when COVID-19 was declared as a pandemic by WHO and trying to explore the broader question to find if there were any impacts to the flight activity at the 2nd largest airport in California when COVID-19 was declared.

• How many flights departed and arrived at the airport in March 2020?
• What was the daily flight arrival/departure volume?
• What were the busiest routes?
• What were the most lengthy routes? How many flights are within 500–1000 mile range vs longer flights?
• How do international and domestic flight trends compare on a daily basis and what is the overall combined trend?
• Where were the flights going?
• What were the daily flight trends?
• Which carriers had the most flights?
• What were the daily flight trends for the top 5 carriers?
• What does a network diagram for all connections to and from SFO look like? What is the visual view of connections within the United States?

Visualizations — Explanation, Pros & Cons

While the Tableau workbook has many visualizations, the following few have been included in this report. Certain worksheets have been created to serve as data inputs in aggregated slides.

Background from Unsplash.com

Conclusion and Next Steps

This visualization described the data and trends. However, much fact finding is needed to explain the trends between destinations, daily trends, what’s normal for weekdays vs weekends, etc.

The story could be complemented with additional research and enriching the dataset for the entire year worth of flight activity for SFO airport. This would enable comparing past months/years to see if there were any true outliers, monthly/quarterly trends and how human fear factor, travel restrictions all played a role in the mass loss for the airline industry and the businesses connected to the airport.

References

Tableau Data Source. 2021. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HT50BNyzOpOri6ZnlkeJu6alyvC_8ipr

About San Francisco Airport. 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_International_Airport

About SFO Airport International Terminal Information. 2021. https://upgradedpoints.com/travel/airports/san-francisco-international-sfo-airport/

The day everything changed. 2021. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/11/975663437/march-11-2020-the-day-everything-changed

Graphics Used. 2021. www.unsplash.com