Aircraft vertical profile prediction based on surveillance data only

The paper is concerned with aircraft vertical profile prediction. It presents methods which combine stored performance characteristics and trajectory observation data to predict the profile. Also, it derives some new methods which estimate the trajectory defining coefficients directly from vertical surveillance data. Performance results are also included for comparison between the category of methods which uses aircraft performance characteristics and the second category of methods that does not use performance data. The advantage of the new methods is that they cater for all aircraft types and operating conditions and can better exploit the higher reporting rates