Forecasting Passenger Arrivals at the Gotham International Airport

Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the ensuing measures by the federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to increase airline security, airports have faced the problem of long waiting lines and waiting times at security gates. One of the key components of any effort by the TSA to operationally improve airport security procedures while reducing passenger waiting times and inconvenience is forecasting passenger arrivals at security checkpoints in order to determine how many security checkpoints and staff are needed.

At the Gotham International Airport, TSA operations analysts would like to forecast passenger arrivals for next July, the airport"s busiest travel month of the year, for the purpose of determining how many security checkpoints they should staff during the month in order that waiting lines and times will not be excessively long. Demand for airline travel has generally been increasing during the past three years. There are two main concourses at Gotham International, East and West, each serving different airlines. The following table shows passenger arrivals at the West concourse for 10 days (selected ran-domly) in two-hour segments from 4:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M.for the month of July for the past three years.

Develop a forecast for daily passenger arrivals at the of year 4. Discuss the various forecast model variations West concourse at Gotham for each time period for July that might be used to develop this forecast.