Big Data Analysis of Flight Phases Distance Using Multi-Agent Systems Sandro Jerônimo de Almeida, Morton E. O’ Kelly & Ricardo Poley Martins Ferreira III. Results
I. Introduction
Flights Phase Distance vs Total Trip Distance
Aircraft efficiency varies across routes stages. It is potentially useful to understand how aircraft consume fuel across different flight distance ranges.
Diff (%) between GCD and WPD vs Total Trip Distance
1000
45%
900
40%
800
35%
700
30%
Phase distance (NM)
Selecting the appropriate type of aircraft for a set of routes is an important task for airlines in order to save fuel and reduce CO2 emissions
Objective: this work analyzes phase distances of worldwide flights with distance below 1000 NM.
600
25%
500
20%
400
15%
300 200
10%
100
5%
0
0%
Flight Phase Distance
Total Trip Distance (NM)
100% Taxi Out + Take Off + Climb
Total Trip Distance (NM)
Descent + Landing + Taxi in
Taxi out + Take off + Climb
Cruise
Cruise
Descent + Landing + Taxi out
Total
90%
Flights Distribution: Great Circle Distance vs Waypoint Distance
80%
Cruise stage
Climb stage
60% 450
50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
350
400 350
800
300 250
300 250
600
200
200
150
400
150
100
200
100
50
50 0 0
50
100
150 200 250 Great Circle Distance (NM)
Total Trip Distance (NM) Descent + Landing + Taxi in
300
350
0
400
200
400
600 800 Great Circle Distance (NM)
Equipment
Data collected by feeders of PlaneFinder.net in September 2013 Data filter and transformation: waypoints were transformed in approx. 1 MM flights 38,341 flights are complete (exists at least 1 waypoint at each 20 km in the route)
80%
70%
70%
60%
Difference (%) GCD and WPD
Data acquisition: 81 millions of waypoints captured by worldwide ASD-B antennas
Difference (%) GCD and WPD
II. Methodology
60%
50% 40% 30%
Taxi out + Take off + Climb
Cruise
Descent +Landing + Taxi in
Difference (%) between GCD and WPD on climb and descent phases 70.00%
Dimension 1: climb (ascent), cruise and descent flight phases
60.00%
RJ1H
Metrics: GCD, WPD and the percentage difference between GDC and WPD (Diff %)
300
350
400
30% 20% 10%
BOS
BWI
DCA
DEN DFW
FLL
IAH
JFK
LAS
LAX
LGA
LGB
MCO MIA
OAK
ORD
SAN
SFO
SLC
SMF
SNA
45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% American Airlines
Delta Air Lines
Frontier Airlines
40.00% B753 B739 30.00% A318
B788
F70
20.00% B736
A320 A388
A319
B737
E195
Metrics
A306 RJ85
A321
B763
B738
B733 B735 B734
E175
5.00%
JetBlue Airways
Southwest Spirit Airlines Airlines
United Airlines
United Parcel Service
Virgin America
WestJet
10.00%
15.00%
Difference (%) on Climb Stage
Climb
Flight phase Cruise
Descent
Total Origin-Destin
65.54 NM (22.54%)
148.41 NM (51.03%)
76.87 NM (26.43%)
290.81 NM (100%)
72.34 NM (22.67%)
150.60 NM (47.20%)
96.15 NM (30.13%)
319.08 NM (100%)
10.38%
1.47%
25.09%
12.32%
4.86%
1.43%
20.46%
5.34%
B752
F100
0.00% 0.00%
150 200 250 Great Circle Distance (NM)
Averages
E190
Dimension 2: distance rate, equipment model and U.S. airline and airports
100
40%
AirTran Airways AT76
10.00%
50
0%
50.00%
Difference (%) on Descent Stage
Data analysis – Dimensions & Metrics
0
50%
Big data processing A Multi-agent system (MAS) was used to reproduce/simulate the complete flights For each flight phase were computed the great circle distance (GCD) and the sum of the distances between the waypoints of the route (WPD)
0
50%
AUS
0%
The MAS adopts a flight phases classification algorithm based on ICAO standards
1200
0%
20% 10%
For each flight the median filter was used to remove noise in waypoints (lat, long, alt).
1000
U.S. Airports and Airlines
Difference (%) GCD and WPD
Cruise
450
1000
0
Taxi out + Take Off + Climb
Descent stage
1200
400
Waypoint Distance (NM)
Phase distance (%)
70%
20.00%
25.00%
Avg. GCD Avg. WPD Avg. Diff (%) Standard dev.
V. Conclusion Deviation: Diff (%) = [(WPD / GCD) – 1] x 100
Flight paths take their biggest deviation in the climb and descent phases — nearly 10% and 25% respectively — compared with the cruise phase (which tends to be much more predictable). The results also show that phase distances are not linear in respect to total flight distances for trips below 500 nautical miles.
The aircraft models E175 and B75 take more deviation in the climb stage while RJ1H tend to has more deviation in the descent phase. The U.S. flights operated by AirTran Airways airline and the flights departing from BOS, JFK, MIA and SNA airports tend to have more deviation in the climb stage (>20%). Future work will link this analysis with an accurate fuel burn estimating model in order to analyze flight networks and their costs. Acknowledgement: (I) Center for Urban and Regional Analysis and The Ohio State University
(II) CAPES (Agency of Brazilian Ministry of Education) – Program Science Without Borders
(III) PlaneFinder.net - Live Flight Status Tracker