Aircraft trajectory generation is a high stakes problem with a wide scope of applications, including collision risk estimation, capacity management and airspace design. Most generation methods focus on optimizing a criterion under constraints to find an optimal path, or on predicting aircraft trajectories. Nevertheless, little in the way of contribution has been made in the field of the artificial generation of random sets of trajectories. This work proposes a new approach to model two-dimensional flows in order to build realistic artificial flight paths. The method has the advantage of being highly intuitive and explainable. Experiments were conducted on go-arounds at Zurich Airport, and the quality of the generated trajectories was evaluated with respect their shape and statistical distribution. The last part of the study explores strategies to extend the work to non-regularly shaped trajectories.

Go-arounds (GAs) are standard air traffic control procedures during which aircraft approach a runway but do not land. The incidence of a GA can subsequently affect the workload of flight crews and air traffic controllers, and might impact an airport runway’s throughput capacity. In this study, two different modeling methods for predicting the occurrence of GAs based on open-source Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) and meteorological data are presented. A macroscopic model quantifies the probability of a GA within the next hour for an airport by applying a generalized additive model. A microscopic model employs a number of machine learning classifiers on trajectories of aircraft on approach in order to predict if a GA will be performed. Even though the results of the macroscopic model are promising, the information currently available to predict the probability of a GA is not detailed enough to achieve satisfactory predictions. Similarly, the microscopic model is capable of predicting 50% of all GAs, with false positive rate below 7%. Despite the limitations of the quality of the results, the authors are convinced that both modeling methods can be inspiring to other researchers and provide useful insights into the airport system under scrutiny.

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

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