A Study of Air Freight Forecasting Using the ARIMA Model

ARIMA 모델을 이용한 항공운임예측에 관한 연구

Purpose - In recent years, many firms have attempted various approaches to cope with the continual increase of aviation transportation. The previous research into freight charge forecasting models has focused on regression analyses using a few influence factors to calculate the future price. However, these approaches have limitations that make them difficult to apply into practice: They cannot respond promptly to small price changes and their predictive power is relatively low. Therefore, the current study proposes a freight charge-forecasting model using time series data instead a regression approach. The main purposes of this study can thus be summarized as follows. First, a proper model for freight charge using the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model, which is mainly used for time series forecast, is presented. Second, a modified ARIMA model for freight charge prediction and the standard process of determining freight charge based on the model is presented. Third, a straightforward freight charge prediction model for practitioners to apply and utilize is presented. Research design, data, and methodology - To develop a new freight charge model, this study proposes the ARIMAC(p,q) model, which applies time difference constantly to address the correlation coefficient (autocorrelation function and partial autocorrelation function) problem as it appears in the ARIMA(p,q) model and materialize an error-adjusted ARIMAC(p,q). Cargo Account Settlement Systems (CASS) data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) are used to predict the air freight charge. In the modeling, freight charge data for 72 months (from January 2006 to December 2011) are used for the training set, and a prediction interval of 23 months (from January 2012 to November 2013) is used for the validation set. The freight charge from November 2012 to November 2013 is predicted for three routes - Los Angeles, Miami, and Vienna - and the accuracy of the prediction interval is analyzed using mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). Results - The result of the proposed model shows better accuracy of prediction because the MAPE of the error-adjusted ARIMAC model is 10% and the MAPE of ARIMAC is 11.2% for the L.A. route. For the Miami route, the proposed model also shows slightly better accuracy in that the MAPE of the error-adjusted ARIMAC model is 3.5%, while that of ARIMAC is 3.7%. However, for the Vienna route, the accuracy of ARIMAC is better because the MAPE of ARIMAC is 14.5% and the MAPE of the error-adjusted ARIMAC model is 15.7%. Conclusions - The accuracy of the error-adjusted ARIMAC model appears better when a route's freight charge variance is large, and the accuracy of ARIMA is better when the freight charge variance is small or has a trend of ascent or descent. From the results, it can be concluded that the ARIMAC model, which uses moving averages, has less predictive power for small price changes, while the error-adjusted ARIMAC model, which uses error correction, has the advantage of being able to respond to price changes quickly.