A Flight Trajectory Model for a PC-Based Airspace Analysis Tool

This paper documents a method for rapid generation of aircraft flight trajectories. Rapid generation of flight trajectories is important for simulation models of air traffic that involve large numbers of aircraft, especially if complex interdependencies exist between flights and short simulation run times are required. The model provides detailed flight trajectories by synchronizing the discrete events that define model trajectories with significant events of typical flight operations and methodically adjusting the size of variable simulation time steps. This paper introduces the concept of flight phases to group flight events and their associated trajectory parameters and presents a discrete-event flight trajectory model that is based on aircraft performance and centered on piloting procedures.