Comparison of the Impacts of Airport Terminal/Surface Weather Hazards

*† ‡ § This study analyzes the Air Traffic Management (ATM) impacts of surface/terminal weather constraints at the 35 busiest airports in the National Airspace System (NAS). The degradation in airport departure and arrival rate performance is investigated during time periods where ceiling, visibility, surface winds, freezing precipitation, and thunderstorms prevent clear weather throughput. Using cumulative distribution functions (CDFs), we compare airport performance during time periods when weather hazards are present with clear weather baseline performance. Comparing against the clear weather baseline as well as across weather hazard types allows us to rank the effects of various weather hazards. Weighting such results by the frequency of occurrence of the weather event allows us to identify the most costly weather hazards in the NAS for terminal area operations. Such information allows us to focus future ATM investments on those technologies that can best mitigate the most significant weather hazards affecting the NAS. All comparisons are performed with 2009 operational ATM data.