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Dataset for EUROCONTROL PRC 2024 Data Challenge on Aircraft Take-off Weight Estimation

  • J. Sun (Creator)
  • Enrico Spinielli (Creator)

Dataset

Description

This dataset was created for the EUROCONTROL Performance Review Commission (PRC) Data Challenge 2024, which aimed to engage data scientists and aviation enthusiasts in developing open models to estimate aircraft take-off weight from readily available open data sources.

Overview

The dataset represents a unique collection of otherwise difficult-to-obtain flight information, combining:

- Flight information (origin/destination, take-off/landing times, aircraft type)

- ADS-B trajectory data from OpenSky

- Actual take-off weight data from airlines

This dataset contains 527,162 flights flown throughout Europe in 2022, representing 6.1% of all flights in EUROCONTROL airspace.


DOI for the data repository

https://doi.org/10.4121/8cb8484b-dbe7-4750-8b87-a5b1dbc621b4

Background

Aircraft take-off weight (ATOW) is a critical parameter for modeling fuel consumption and estimating aviation emissions. This dataset enables the development of open models to predict ATOW from publicly available flight data.

Citation

If you use data from this repository, please cite this dataset and also the following paper:

Aircraft Take-off Weight Estimation: The EUROCONTROL PRC 2024 Data Challenge
Enrico Spinielli; Junzi Sun; Martin Strohmeier; Xavier Olive; Quinten Goens; Rainer Koelle; Allan Tart; John Fitzgerald

Journal of Open Aviation Science, 2025

https://doi.org/10.59490/joas.2025.8252

Dataset composition
The dataset consists of two main components:

1. Actual Take-off Weight (ATOW) Data

- Source: EUROCONTROL's Network Manager augmented with airline-provided take-off weight data

- Airline information is anonymized with agreements for open data sharing

- Total: 527,162 flights with complete weight information

2. Trajectory Data

- Source: OpenSky Network ADS-B state vectors

- Enhanced with meteorological data from Copernicus ERA5 via the fastmeto library

- Time window: 5 minutes before actual off-block time to 30 minutes after arrival
Date made available9 Jul 2025
PublisherTU Delft - 4TU.ResearchData
Geographical coverageEurope

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