Assessment of easily accessible and proprietary models of departure aircraft performance using open flight tracking data and a mixed analysis-synthesis approach

Predicting the environmental impact of civil air traffic around airports requires reliable modelling of aircraft operations, especially for departures due to their high engine thrust near the ground. Assessing currently available aircraft performance models is difficult without proprietary FDR (flight data recorder) information, but the recent availability of open flight tracking data has prompted formulation of a reliable modelling tool for flight operation reconstruction using a mixed analysis-synthesis approach (MASA) previously developed by the authors. The MASA tailors prescribed ANP (aircraft noise and performance) procedures to actual flight operations, and allows assessing different performance models without using FDR data. In this work, an upgraded MASA is used to compare the departure performance predictions of BADA4, a restricted-access proprietary model, with those based for thrust on ANP, more easily accessible, and for fuel burn on the open-data ICAO Doc 9889 method. The thrust estimation is conducted using either the ANP or BADA4 sub-model, with a hybrid sub-model also tested, while extension to fuel burn is performed including Doc 9889 and BADA4 methods. After processing over 11,000 flight-tracked departures, the resulting trajectory errors and modelled thrust outputs show good reliability of ANP especially near the take-off, while BADA4 appears more accurate in higher-altitude climb phases. For fuel burn, the open-data method yields values nearly 40 % below BADA4, but the underestimation is halved when compared to literature FDR data. These results demonstrate that easily accessible thrust and fuel flow models paired with flight tracking data can provide satisfactory predictions of departure aircraft performance.