Identification of Airspeed Safety Envelope for Long Landing

Runway overrun is a major threat to civil aviation safety. Many studies of runway overruns have been conducted on risk assessment, risk prediction, and risk factor identification, but data-driven quantitative operational guidance for pilots remains limited in the literature. Airspeed exceedance in the landing phase has been identified as one of the major risk factors of long landing and runway overruns. By taking advantage of data collected from the Quick Access Recorder, this paper proposes a novel method utilizing the Kolmogorov–Smirnov index to identify the airspeed safety envelope, which is defined as a monotonic, smooth function of “airspeed safety threshold versus height” during the landing phase. Analysis results show that the probability of long landing significantly increases if the airspeed exceeds the identified envelope, and pilots are suggested to keep the airspeed below the safety envelope to reduce the risk of long landing. The proposed framework is easy to implement and interpret, with an efficient algorithm. It provides a starting point for similar applications aimed at identifying safety thresholds and envelopes of key operational parameters and providing practical guidance for pilots.