Gov’t adopts tool to track airport passenger, cargo traffic
Ports Authority Executive Director Ingrid Colberg-Rodríguez and Statistics Institute Executive Director Mario Marazzi.
Looking to ease the analysis of activity taking place in Puerto Rico airports to support the tourism and aviation industries, as well as track migration patterns, the Puerto Rico Ports Authority and the Puerto Rico Statistics Institute unveiled the “Aviation Intelligence” online tool.
“Aviation Intelligence” produces graphs and time series on the movement of passengers, mail and merchandise that is broken down by airport of origin, the destination airport, airline and aircraft type, using an interface that is easy to understand and navigate. In addition, data can be exported to Excel and graphs can be exported as images, officials from the two agencies said during a news conference Tuesday.
For example, the tool allows analyzing local aviation industry trends or identifying the main airports where tourists arrive to Puerto Rico or the ones they use to leave the island. Also, it allows tracking the airlines that serve Puerto Rico airports and the specific aircraft they are using. The tool also helps to quantify all of the activities.
“The movement of air passengers has important implications for our economy and society. For example, the number of travelers entering or leaving Puerto Rico through airports during one year is more than the total population living in Puerto Rico,” said Statistics Institue Executive Director Mario Marazzi.
“This is why it is extremely important that Puerto Rico count on reliable and accessible statistics on the activities that occur in our airports,” he said.
Puerto Rico, he said, “has to leverage both maritime and aviation port activity, to redirect our economic development strategy. For this, we need to improve access to statistics on this activity.”
“It turns out that there is a huge volume of available statistics on this, but the information resided in large databases that require specialized software to analyze it. Through the Aviation Intelligence tool, we seek to facilitate the analysis and use of these data,” Marazzi added.
The new tool focuses solely on airport activity, which will support the data collected by the Ports Authority on regional airports, said agency Executive Director Ingrid Colberg-Rodríguez.
The database will provide market information needed to establish new air routes to Puerto Rico or new businesses at local airports, she added.
“Aviation Intelligence” uses statistics published by the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, based on the information the airlines provide monthly to the federal government.
