ADS-B-based Characterization of Flight Behaviors in Terminal Airspace for Safety Applications

This paper presents a framework to characterize flight behaviors -- common trajectory patterns observable in ADS-B data -- and apply these characterizations to two safety-relevant applications: anomaly detection and behavior interaction analysis. By capturing the natural statistical variation in normal aircraft and helicopter operations, the framework enables systematic identification of anomalous trajectories that deviate from nominal behavior, which may reflect operational errors or emergent hazards. The framework also assesses spatial and temporal overlap between behaviors to identify cases where aircraft must rely on tactical, rather than procedural, separation which may elevate the associated collision risk. Flight behavior characterization of arrival, departure, and helicopter trajectories in the terminal airspaces of DCA, JFK, BOS, and SFO show that this approach supports safety analysis by detecting anomalous trajectories and uncovering interactions between flight behaviors in complex airspaces. Results identified anomalies and multiple behavior interactions which may have elevated collision risk. The observed actual navigation performance of RNAV and RNP behaviors were found to be significantly more accurate than the required navigation performance of their corresponding procedures.