Comparison of Various Numerical Weather Prediction Models for Monitoring of In-Flight Static Pressure Measurements

Abstract

This study deals with the evaluation of a technique to monitor the altitude indication of airborne aircraft air data systems on the basis of different meteorological numerical weather prediction models. Within the framework of this analysis, flight experiments with the Airbus A320-232 (’Advanced Technology Research Aircraft’, ATRA) and a Dassault Falcon 20-E5 of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have been conducted to compare the meteorological data used with reference pressure measurements. The evaluation of the as-sessed technique shows good levels of agreement with established high accuracy pressure measurements of low measurement uncertainty that are also used for the calibration of pitot-static-systems. Based on the findings, conceptual proposals are considered for the operational use of the discussed methodology to moni-tor static pressure measurements of air data systems.