A Data Driven Approach for Characterization of Ramp Area Push Back and Ramp-Taxi Processes

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to better understand and characterize the time duration distributions between the push back, stop and taxi events within the ramp area transit time. The ramp area transit time is the time between push back and arrival at the taxiway spot. Specifically, the goodness-of-fit of log-normal and gamma distributions are assessed to different processes within ramp area transit time data that was collected at the Charlotte Douglas airport over a three day period. In this paper, we also assess the goodness-of-fit of two-dimensional parametric distributions to sampled two-dimensional ramp area conflict distribution data. Better understanding of both the distributions related to the different processes within the ramp area transit time and the conflict distributions are critical to the execution of safe and efficient ramp area operations.