Knowledge of the statistics of aircraft vertical speeds is important both for the construction of realistic traffic simulators and for the development of trajectory prediction tools for use in future air traffic control (ATC) systems. This paper reports on the analysis of radar data recordings for nearly 10000 civil flights on airways. Results are presented for the means and spreads of vertical speeds as functions of altitude. Evidence is presented that roughly half of the observed spreads arise from fluctuations within each aircraft's trajectory, as opposed to variation from one aircraft to another. A simple procedure is proposed for simulating vertical speed data which has statistics similar to those obtained from the radar recordings. Some consequences of the results for the development of trajectory prediction tools for use in future ATC systems are discussed. The results suggest that the provision of accurate trajectory prediction tools is not as straightforward as it might at first appear to be.
