Historical Winds Database

[Phil77]

I am looking to obtain a historical wind database for a computer-based flight planning project. Can somebody point me in the right direction?

My internet research came back with nil results - I mean, all the flightplanning applications that are existing worldwide must have some kind of source (commercial/public domain etc.); I doubt they're all making that stuff up themselves!

(I would have posted on this thread: http://www.pprune.org/questions/202425-boeing-winds.html but it's closed/locked.)

Thanks! Phil

[compressor stall]

I believe that the British Met Office do a lots of worldwide wind modelling that many flight planning models use. Someone might know more.

[no sig]

Try Boeing and/or Airbus, they both have upper wind/temp/route data sets. Whether they are for sale or not I don't know. But Boeing used to publish these data in freely available manuals years ago.

[Tail Wags Dog]

The UK Met Office do indeed have a statistical weather database, although I'm not sure they will make it freely (financially) available. I am led to believe that the manufacturer's data (Boeing at least) is based on decades old source data.

I know that at least one of the major flight planning providers maintains its own staistical weather db based on around the past 15-20 years data received from its WAFC source.

[Phil77]

Thank you very much for you input.

I seems to be quite a difficult task, since Boeing bought Jeppesen and they are offering their own flight planning services (therefore hardly will give up their sources).

Keep it coming! :ok:

[no sig]

phil77

As I'm sure you know, modern flight planning systems use real-time grib data for upper air data from the world's main Met centres- not statistical winds and temps. That said, most systems have a 'commercial' route analysis function using a seasonal winds/temps data. But you would not use these data for operational flight planning of course. I can't help but think an easier route for you might simply be to use real-time grib data rather than basing your system on historical data that could not be used for actual flight planning. Do a search on WMO Grib data and you'll find a wealth of information.

I can't think of anyone else apart from Airbus/Boeing who would have historical route based data that you would be able to plug into modern computıng systems. You might try NOAA or NASA, who knows they might have the raw historical data available.

[Phil77]

no sig:

Thank you very much for your response and suggestions, I will look into it.

My apologies, I misused flight planning instead of flight operations (sales, quote, dispatch) in my earlier posts: you are certainly correct, I would not base my fuel and route calculations on historical data!
For now the software will not be used for the actual flight planning part, it is merely a sales and management tool and therefore the software needs to know: "westbound in the second half of February, what is my 85% chance to encounter what kind of wind?"

Thanks again for pointing that out! :ok: