An explainable machine learning approach to improve take-off time predictions

Ramon Dalmau, Franck Ballerini, Herbert Naessens, Seddik Belkoura and Sebastian Wangnick

Journal of Air Transport Management, 2021, vol. 95, issue C

Abstract: Accurate aircraft trajectory predictions are necessary to compute exact traffic demand figures, which are crucial for an efficient and effective air traffic flow and capacity management. At present, the uncertainty of the take-off time is one of the major contributions to the loss of trajectory predictability. In the EUROCONTROL Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre, the predicted take-off time for each individual flight relies on the information received from the Enhanced Traffic Flow Management System. However, aircraft do not always take-off at the times reported by this system due to several factors, which effects and interactions are too complex to be expressed with hard-coded rules. Previous work proposed a machine learning model that, based on historical data, was able to predict the take-off time of individual flights from a set of input features that effectively captures some of these elements. The model demonstrated to reduce by 30% the take-off time prediction errors of the current system one hour before the time that flight is scheduled to depart from the parking position. This paper presents an extension of the model, which overcomes this look-ahead time constraint and allows to improve take-off time predictions as early as the initial flight plan is received. In addition, a subset of the original set of input features has been meticulously selected to facilitate the implementation of the solution in an operational air traffic flow and capacity management system, while minimising the loss of predictive power. Finally, the importance and interactions of the input features are thoroughly analysed with additive feature attribution methods.

Keywords: Trajectory prediction; Machine learning; Take-off time (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969699721000739
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jaitra:v:95:y:2021:i:c:s0969699721000739

DOI: 10.1016/j.jairtraman.2021.102090

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Air Transport Management is currently edited by Anne Graham

More articles in Journal of Air Transport Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().