Flightglobal has been able to team with Clive Lewis of the Achieving the Difference consultancy, who brings with him decades of forecasting experience within the commercial aerospace sector. Working together with the Flightglobal Insight research team, he has painstakingly combined Flightglobal’s data resource with his expertise in developing computer-based forecasting tools.
The resulting forecasting model has spent a year in the making. Much time has been invested in ensuring that the methodology is robust, including some sterling work by the UK’s Bristol Business School in proving the model against decades worth of data.
At the heart of the forecast lies the Pachinko Probability Tree. Like the Japanese arcade game after which it is named, the model traces individual aircraft as they drop through the air transport system, assigning probabilities to which way they will fall in terms of service, storage or resale. That in turn is fed by demand-side analysis based on the relationship between traffic demand and economic growth, the latter based on predictions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Three forecasts in one
You actually have three forecasts:
- The top-line driven by demand
- Which aircraft are retained to continue serving demand
- New deliveries to meet growth in demand and as replacement to fill the gap left by removals