Comparison of Arrival Tracks at Different Airports

This paper analyzes arrival flight track data at Chicago (ORD) and Atlanta (ATL) airports. We investigate distributions of vertical and lateral position at different distances from the runway threshold in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) and visual meteorological conditions (VMC). In IMC, the observed standard deviations at different distances are similar between the two airports. The results reported in this paper are also similar to those reported at St. Louis (STL) in [1]. Visual comparison of the observed distributions also shows a close similarity. This provides some indication that distributions observed at one airport in IMC may generalize to other airports. In VMC, there are some differences between the distributions. We also fit probability density functions (PDFs) to lateral and vertical positions. In general, the normal distribution provides the best fit among the normal, lognormal, gamma, and Weibull families. The quality of the fit is better in IMC closer to the runway threshold. Keywordsflight tracks; probability density functions