Towards understanding the impact of convective weather on aircraft arrival traffic at the Hong Kong International Airport

Abstract

Abstract Convective weather (thunderstorm clusters with horizontal extents from tens to hundreds of kilometers, and vertically up to 10 - 15 kilometers in the troposphere) along aircraft flight trajectory is a key factor influencing air traffic management decisions and aviation safety. For an airport, aircraft arrival performance is typically more sensitive to weather conditions than departures. The occurrence of thunderstorms along or around flight routes may force the arriving aircraft to hold/vector in the terminal maneuvering area (TMA) following air traffic control (ATC) instructions, leading to additional fuel burn and delays. Such effects could cascade and bring further negative impacts to air traffic inside TMA. In this work, we perform a joint analysis of high-resolution radar rainfall distribution with 2-D aircraft flight trajectory data surrounding the Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) to uncover the potential spatio-temporal impact of thunderstorms on air traffic. Results indicate that aircraft arrival traffic is sensitive to the location of convective weather in TMA, which also introduces a time lag effect on subsequent air traffic on the order of hours.