This document discusses using big data analytics methods to address issues in the aviation industry. It defines big data and explains why it is needed due to the large and diverse datasets in aviation. Traditional data mining techniques are ineffective on heterogeneous aviation data. The document proposes using cloud-based big data analytics platforms like masFlight to integrate diverse aviation data sources in real-time and perform fast data mining to help with operations planning and research. This can help address key issues in aviation around data standardization, normalization and scalability.