Extracting Flight Plans from Recorded ADS-B Trajectories

Abstract

Historic aircraft trajectory data are valuable resources for various research in the field of air traffic management. With the widespread use of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), these data are relatively easier to obtain. However, there are instances, where the original flight plans that do not contain controller interventions are necessary, such as developing scenarios for Human-in-The-Loop (HiTL) simulations. Even though the air traffic control system keeps records of the flight plan data, they are more difficult to obtain and often are not in the correct format to be applied to simulations. In this study, an algorithm is developed, which can extract the flight plan from recorded ADS-B trajectory and the Aeronautical Information Publication (AIP) that contains all the route and procedure information. The algorithm was validated against HiTL simulation results, where both the resulting trajectories with controller interventions and the original flight plans are available and showed a 98 percent success rate. The algorithms are applied to find the flight plans of about one million flights in the year 2019 that contain trajectory points inside the Incheon Flight Information Region (FIR). This flight plan extraction algorithm will be useful not only for the fast-time or real-time simulations of the air traffic but also for aviation safety-related research areas, where the controller-pilot interactions are important.