Kinematic Airport Surface Trajectory Model Development

*Airport surface trajectory models are a key component of current airport surface decision support tools as well as future surface traffic research concepts such as optimized taxi scheduling. These automation tools and concepts, however, commonly use constant speed based airport surface trajectory models even though aircraft do not taxi at a constant speed. This paper describes the development of an empirical kinematic airport surface trajectory model that was derived from the study of actual taxiing speed and acceleration characteristics on specific segments of a taxi route, such as straights and turns. A limited validation study showed this empirical surface trajectory model predicted unimpeded taxi times an average of only 9 percent earlier than the actual mean while modeling speed and acceleration variations observed in actual surface traffic movement. This was approximately 30 percent better than the constant speed based surface trajectory model to which it was compared.