WRAP: An open-source kinematic aircraft performance model

Abstract

Open access to flight data from Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) has provided researchers with more insights for air traffic management than aircraft tracking alone. With large quantities of trajectory data collected from a wide range of different aircraft types, it is possible to extract accurate aircraft performance parameters. In this paper, a set of more than thirty parameters from seven distinct flight phases are extracted for common commercial aircraft types. It uses various data mining methods, as well as a maximum likelihood estimation approach to generate parametric models for these performance parameters. All parametric models combined can be used to describe a complete flight that includes takeoff, initial climb, climb, cruise, descent, final approach, and landing. Both analytical results and summaries are shown. When available, optimal parameters from these models are also compared with the Base of Aircraft Data and the Eurocontrol aircraft performance database. This research presents a comprehensive set of methods for extracting different aircraft performance parameters. It also provides the first set of open parametric performance data for common aircraft types. All model data are published as open data under a flexible open-source license.