Assessing the influence of wind shear on air traffic operations at Kajjansi Air Field

Abstract

Weather variability is one of the leading causes of aircraft delays. This is because weather highly affects flight safety especially for aircrafts in approach- landing and take-off-climb out phases owing to their proximity to the ground. Aircraft delays affect the aviation sector negatively due to the additional cost attached to them. This study therefore analyzed the impacts of wind shear on air craft operations in terms of delays at Kajjansi Airfield between 2014 and 2018. This was achieved through analysis of wind shear and temperature together with aircraft delays using trend analysis and regression techniques among others. Results show that there is a weak correlation between aircraft delays and wind shear with R-squared = 0.0012 implying that only 0.12% of number of aircraft delays were affected and influenced by wind shear at Kajjansi Airfield which is relative low value to ascertain that aircraft delays are wholly influenced by wind shears. Results further show that, much of the wind shear incidences at Kajjansi Air field were recorded mostly in the rainy seasons of March to May and September to November compared to the dry seasons of December to February and June to August and this is mainly attributed to the convective nature of the area, that results in the formation of convective weather phenomena and the release of latent heat that is associated with temperature inversions. Regression results for wind shear and air temperature showed a weak negative linear relationship between wind shear and air temperature at Kajjansi Aircraft with R-squared =0.0176, implying that only 1.76% of the wind shear was affected and influenced by air temperature at Kajjansi Air field.