Effect of flight plans predictability and accuracy on traffic demand forecast

Abstract

Traffic Demand Forecast is a key aspect of Air Traffic Management (ATM), even more relevant recently as becomes increasingly more important to effectively scale capacity and associated resources (Air Traffic Controllers amongst them) to match the actual demand.In the case of ATM, many different demand forecasts can be considered, from the simplest to the most complicated ones, all aiming to provide a reliable forecast with the maximum time anticipation, thereby allowing the Network Managers at the different network levels to anticipate the needs to fulfill. However, there is no real indicator assessing the real accuracy of these forecasts.In this scenario it has been launched by CRIDA a long-term research activity with the goal to define reliability indicators that can be applied to traffic forecasts to fill in the described gap. This study will be performed through the availability of samples of both real-time flight plan information and post-flight data, and divided into several analysis phases. This reliability index is envisioned as a valuable complementary tool in combination with any traffic forecasts, as it is intended to provide the user improved awareness of the results obtained by using a particular demand forecast.Thus, this paper addresses an analysis of real ATM system data in order to determine both predictability and accuracy indicators which will eventually combine for a reliability index. The promising results of the first stage of this research activity are presented here, showing some already applicable conclusions.