Back in the early 1970s I was briefly attached to the BOAC Eastern Routes planning office, where I was tasked to develop a ‘passenger preference model’ to predict demand on Australia routes taking into account number of stops, day of week, VC10/707 etc (I don’t think the 747s were on the route at the time) – all based on historical data. From memory the slowest flight had seven stops.
I crunched numbers for a week or two, and proudly emerged with a set of formulae which I knew were bull**** but impressed my masters.
My reputation preceded me when I moved to the transatlantic division and I was in great demand when the UK repudiated the US bilateral and insisted on mutual capacity cutbacks, got whisked off to Washington and NYC to evaluate various proposals e.g. BA and TWA would be restricted to 5pw on Chicago but could choose their days. Once again I knew my figures were hogwash but everybody believed them.