Forecasting air passengers at Sao Paulo International Airport using a mixture of local experts model

An integrated mixture of local experts model is employed to forecast air passengers at Sao Paulo International Airport. Such approach is normally used in rapidly changing situations, i.e., when the time series presents turning points or any kind of structural change and allows the development of forecasting models that takes into account the heterogeneity of the mapping structure into different regions of the input space. The model is validated using out-of-sample data, and the accuracy of the generated predictions proves to be satisfactory. An assessment of uncertainty in the predictions is made, as well as long lead-time forecasts employing the built model, considering different scenarios. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.