Determine the zeros and the maximum or minimum of a quadratic function, and solve
problems involving quadratic functions, including problems arising from real-world
applications;US Airways currently service 19 million customers annually at its Philadelphia hub and operates
417 daily flights to 111 destinations in the United States, Canada, Europe, The Caribbean and
Latin America.
They conducted an essay competition The revenue crisis, How will the US Airline Industry
Recover?, in all over the schools in US in that essay students had to include the points such as:
 What are recovery strategies?
 How do airlines enhance revenue, reduce costs and affect customer welfare?
A few extracts from the best essay were as follows:
 Company should provide a fare of $260.00 each for the first 100 or less passengers. For
each passenger over 100 person mark, the fare should be decreased by $2.00 per person
to get the maximum revenue.
Your responsibility:
Part A – Technology
 Make a table with the revenue corresponding to each passenger increase
 Identify the number of passengers to produce the greatest revenue
 Draw a scatter plot relating the revenue R to the passenger increase & sketch a curve of
best fit by using a spread sheet
 Find the best quadratic regression model
Steps to follow for Part A – Technology:
1. Open a new spreadsheet
2. Enter the titles and data in column A and column B
3. Select the entries in column A and B, select ‘insert chart’
4. Select XY (scatter) column contains the independent data and column B contains
dependent data.
5. To add the line of best fit, the equation of best fit; select ‘add trend line’ from the chart
menu
6. Be sure that a check mark appears in the box before display the equation on chart
Part B
To find out what number of passengers that produces the greater venue for U. S Airline Industry
algebraically, your process should include well organized instructions, steps and hints as to how
to use algebraic solutions.
Strategies: Using Zeros to get the maximum value or completing the square
B) Suppose your cost function for the air plane a linear function and your revenue function a
quadratic. How could you find the break even points? What solutions might you expect?