Understanding the Terminal Area Traffic Flow Characteristics Using Flight Record Data

Terminal area (TMA) is a significant component of the air transportation and air traffic management system. TMA consists of the airport and the transitional airspace between airports and air traffic control sectors and plays a non-trivial role in determining throughput and operational efficiency. Flights in TMA fly through defined courses, distances, and altitudes between specified navigation aids, expressed as standard terminal arrival routes and standard instrument departures. TMA operations are intrinsically complex, and a deeper understanding of TMA operational behaviour and performance is essential to provide timely solutions for schedule and slot allocations, flow, and congestion management. This paper proposes a flight record driven descriptive framework for simplified analysis and characterization of air traffic flows in TMA. This framework aims to perform a cross-sectional descriptive analysis of four key flow performance metrics and proposes a three-step methodology to extract these parameters from flight records. The framework is easy to comprehend, and results can contribute to developing new strategies and decision support tools for TMA traffic management.