Improving Etms´ Ground Time Predictions

This paper is aimed at analysis of the GTP with two goals in mind: to prove the GTP effectiveness and to propose ways to further improve ETMS ground time predictions. For the first goal, the paper proves that the GTP reduces the errors in estimating flights´ departure times and makes the error distributions narrower. For this study, a metric was developed to quantitatively measure the effectiveness of the GTP. According to the metric, the GTP provides about 15% reduction in departure time error. The metric also demonstrates that there might be room for further improvement. For the second goal, this paper proposes an algorithm that reduces departure time error in case of large departure delays. The main idea of the algorithm is to calculate the value of ground time error observed at the current departures and add it to the ground times of the flights departing in the close future. Depending on the day, the reduction may be up to additional 15%