Microsoft Interview Question
Software Engineer / DevelopersCountry: India
Interview Type: In-Person
I would rather go myself or send someone to the other airport, not as a supervisor of any airport but as a normal visitor and would analyse things so as to why I should prefer my own airport rather than the other one. Because you need to be more informed about the other airport's (read rival) informations in order to succeed or rather stay alive in a competition.
Analyze possible causes of the turn over:
- # of flights (the other airport just has more flights available that's why people choose that airport)
- # of restaurants
- # number of amenities / vicinity of hotels
- proportion of delayed flights
- Ticket prices from your airport and other airport
Then I would run regressions on all these variables and see which one turn out to be significant in terms of explaining the turn over.
Then I would to t-tests of differences between the airports. For example, difference in mean travelers per day for two airports.
Then I would do sensitivity analysis of various attributes that predict traffic volume.
Then I would do factor analysis or Principal Component Analysis to identify the key factors that drive visitor volumes.
Then I would make predictions and forecast results of improving upon these factors based on the data observed.
Assuming that people that used to come to my airport are now going to another one I would the following:
1) Ask the few people still visiting my airport a couple of questions: where are you traveling, where do you live and why did you choose this airport vs. another one.
2) I would then find out if what makes people comeback, is also the reason other people choose the other airports (location, flights, etc.)
3) I would compare all flight information with people's addresses and examine the data to get answers.
4) If everything above results in nothing significantly different between airports, I will then do a walk on both airports to understand if services offered could be the reason (e.g. parking, restaurants, customer service, cleanliness, etc.)
I will try to find out what all CATEGORIES of reasons could be causing this...
- PM March 19, 2013And all that falls under that category...
For example If People Are Having Better/cheaper Alternatives
then of what?
Low fares/better quality or what??
And then they could be mis informed...