System and method for airport terminal area trajectory data clustering for selecting efficient terminal area procedures

A system for determining time and fuel efficient airport terminal area procedures for an aircraft, comprising:

• a client-side flight plan application that collects flight plan (FPL) data comprising, an aircraft type, a departure location, a destination, total weight of the aircraft, and a departure time from a user;
• a third-party flight data source of historical flight data (HFD) for the aircraft type, the departure location, the destination, total weight of the aircraft, and the departure times;
• a server-side flight plan application that receives the FPL data and the HFD via the Internet, where the server side flight plan application comprises,
• a four-dimensional (4D) trajectory flight plan manager that receives the FPL data and the HFD,
• a terminal area procedure trajectory cluster generator that receives the HFD from the 4D trajectory flight plan manager, where the terminal area procedure trajectory cluster generator,
• extracts relevant HFD and terminal area trajectory data,
• identifies relevant terminal area procedures,
• groups the relevant terminal area procedures in clusters, and
• stores the terminal area procedures clusters in a retrievable electronic data repository, and
• a terminal area procedure trajectory selector that selects the most time and fuel efficient terminal area procedures based on the terminal area procedure clusters retrieved from the electronic data repository and FPL data received from the 4D trajectory flight plan manager.