Evaluation of flight efficiency for Stockholm Arlanda Airport using OpenSky Network data

Identification of causes of the delays within transition airspace is an important step in evaluating performance of the Terminal Maneuvering Area (TMA) Air Navigation Services: without knowing the current performance levels, it is difficult to identify which areas could be improved. Inefficient vertical profiles within TMA and deviations from the optimal flight paths due to bad weather conditions are the main sources of performance decline. In this work, we analyse punctuality and vertical efficiency of Stockholm Arlanda airport arrivals, and seek to quantify the fuel consumption impact associated with the inefficient vertical flight profiles within the Terminal Maneuvering Area (TMA). We use Opensky Network data for evaluation of the Stockholm Arlanda airport performance, comparing it to the DDR2 data provided by Eurocontol, outlining the advantages and disadvantages of both.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Analysis of weather impact on flight efficiency for Stockholm Arlanda Airport arrivals

Analysis of punctuality of airport arrivals, as well as identification of causes of the delays within transition airspace, is an important step in evaluating performance of the Terminal Maneuvering Area (TMA) Air Navigation Ser- vices. In this work we analyse how different weather events influence arrival punctuality and vertical flight efficiency on example of Stockholm Arlanda airport. We quantify the impact of the deviations from the flight plans influenced by different weather events, by demonstrating that they result in significant arrival delays, vertical inefficiencies and calculating how much extra fuel is wasted due to vertical flight inefficiency within Stockholm TMA.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Evaluation of flight efficiency for Stockholm Arlanda Airport arrivals

Analysis of punctuality of airport arrivals, as well as identification of causes of the delays within transition airspace, is an important step in evaluating performance of the Terminal Maneuvering Area (TMA) Air Navigation Services: without knowing the current performance levels, it is difficult to identify which areas could be improved. Deviations from the flight plans is one of the major reasons for arrival delays. In this work, we quantified the impact of the deviations from the flight plans on the fuel burn. One of the main reasons of fuel waste is non- optimal vertical profiles during the descent phase. We calculated how much extra fuel is wasted due to vertical flight inefficiency within Stockholm TMA.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Identification of significant impact factors on Arrival Flight Efficiency within TMA

An important step towards improving the flight performance within Terminal Maneuvering Area (TMA) is the identification of the factors causing inefficiencies. Without knowing which exact factors have high impact on which performance indicators, it is difficult to identify which areas could be improved. In this work, we quantify the flight efficiency using average additional time in TMA, average time flown level and additional fuel consumption associated with the inefficient flight profiles. We apply statistical learning methods to assess the impact of different weather phenomena on the arrival flight efficiency, taking into account the current traffic situation. We utilize multiple data sources for obtaining both historical flight trajectories and historical weather measurements, which facilitates a comprehensive analysis of the variety of factors influencing TMA performance. We demonstrate our approach by identifying that wind gust and snow had the most significant impact on Stockholm Arlanda airport arrivals in 2018.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Impact of Weather on Air Traffic Control

Weather has a strong impact on Air Traffic Management (ATM). Inefficient weather avoidance procedures and inaccurate prognosis lead to longer aircraft routes and, as a result, to fuel waste and increased negative environmental impact. A better integration of weather information into the operational ATM-system will ultimately improve the overall air traffic safety and efficiency. Covid-19 pandemics affected aviation severely, resulting in an unprecedented reduction of air traffic, and gave the opportunity to study the flight performance in non-congested scenarios. We investigated the historical flight and weather data from Stockholm Arlanda and Gothenburg Landvetter airports for the period of two years 2019 and 2020 and discovered noticeable inefficiencies and environmental performance degradation, which persisted despite significant reduction of traffic intensity in March 2020. This thesis proposes a methodology that allows to distinguish which factors have the highest impact on which aspects of arrival performance in horizontal and vertical dimensions. Academic Excellence in ATM and UTM Research (AEAR) group operating within the Communications and Transport Systems (KTS) division in Linköping University (LIU), together with the Research and Development at Luftfartsverket (LFV, Swedish Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP)) develops optimization techniques to support efficient decision-making for aviation authorities. In this thesis, we design probabilistic models, which take into account the influence of bad weather conditions on the solutions developed in the related project and integrate them into the corresponding optimization framework. Probabilistic models were applied to account for weather impact on Air Traffic Controller (ATCO) work in remote and conventional towers. The probabilistic weather products were used to obtain an ensemble of staffing solutions, from which the probability distributions of the number of necessary ATCOs were derived. The modelling is based on the techniques recently developed within several Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) projects addressing weather uncertainty challenges. The proposed solution was successfully tested using the historical flight and weather data from five airports in Sweden planned for remote operation in the future

Arrival flight efficiency in pre- and post-Covid-19 pandemics

Covid-19 pandemic affected aviation severely, resulting in unprecedented reduction of air traffic. While aviation is slowly re-gaining traffic volumes, we use the opportunity to study the arrival performance in the Terminal Maneuvering Area (TMA) in non-congested scenarios. Applying flight efficiency and environmental performance indicators (PIs) to the historical data of arrivals to Stockholm Arlanda and Gothenburg Landvetter airports, we discover noticeable inefficiencies, despite significant reduction of traffic intensity. We analyze the impact of such factors as weather and traffic intensity on arrival efficiency in isolated scenarios when only one factor dominates: isolated scenario with low traffic and isolated scenario with good weather conditions. Our analysis uncovers that weather has a stronger influence than traffic intensity on the vertical efficiency, while traffic intensity has stronger effect on the lateral efficiency. Impact of traffic intensity on the lateral efficiency might be explained by frequent hold-on patterns and flight trajectory extensions due to vectoring in high traffic conditions. Further investigation is needed to explain weather and vertical/lateral efficiency correlations, the conclusions might be country-specific.Funding Agencies|SESAR Joint Undertaking under the European Union [783287]; Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen); Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket)</p

Evaluation of the Sequencing and Merging Procedures at Three European Airports Using Opensky Data

With the development of aircraft equipment, conventional navigation shifted towards performance-based navigation (PBN) procedures, which significantly improved the efficiency of airport arrivals. Availability of the open-access Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data enables research targeting careful and detailed analysis of the arrival performance. In this work, we demonstrate how we use historical data provided via Opensky Network to investigate various aspects of arrival performance at three European airports implementing different sequencing and merging techniques (Dublin, Stockholm-Arlanda, and Vienna). We create a number of datasets of different size and features, and apply a set of performance metrics characterizing horizontal and vertical efficiency, sequencing and metering effort, as well as environmental efficiency at the chosen airports

Evaluation of flight efficiency for Stockholm Arlanda Airport using OpenSky Network data

Identification of causes of the delays within transition airspace is an important step in evaluating performance of the Terminal Maneuvering Area (TMA) Air Navigation Services: without knowing the current performance levels, it is difficult to identify which areas could be improved. Inefficient vertical profiles within TMA and deviations from the optimal flight paths due to bad weather conditions are the main sources of performance decline. In this work, we analyse punctuality and vertical efficiency of Stockholm Arlanda airport arrivals, and seek to quantify the fuel consumption impact associated with the inefficient vertical flight profiles within the Terminal Maneuvering Area (TMA). We use Opensky Network data for evaluation of the Stockholm Arlanda airport performance, comparing it to the DDR2 data provided by Eurocontol, outlining the advantages and disadvantages of both.Peer Reviewe

Air traffic management and systems IV: selected papers of the 6th ENRI International Workshop on ATM/CNS (EIWAC2019) - Analysis of weather impact on flight efficiency for Stockholm Arlanda airport arrivals

Analysis of punctuality of airport arrivals, as well as identification of causes of the delays within transition airspace, is an important step in evaluating performance of the Terminal Maneuvering Area (TMA) Air Navigation Services. In this work we analyse how different weather events influence arrival punctuality and vertical flight efficiency on example of Stockholm Arlanda airport. We quantify the impact of the deviations from the flight plans influenced by different weather events, by demonstrating that they result in significant arrival delays, vertical inefficiencies and calculating how much extra fuel is wasted due to vertical flight inefficiency within Stockholm TMA.Postprint (published version