Wind is one of the major contributors to uncertainty in continuous descent approach operations. Especially when aircraft that are flying low or idle thrust approaches are issued a required time of arrival over the runway threshold, as is foreseen in some of the future ATC scenari
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Wind is one of the major contributors to uncertainty in continuous descent approach operations. Especially when aircraft that are flying low or idle thrust approaches are issued a required time of arrival over the runway threshold, as is foreseen in some of the future ATC scenarios, the on-board availability of both dependable and accurate wind estimates becomes a necessity. This paper presents a method for real-time estimation of a wind profile in the terminal maneuvering area, based on data transmissions of nearby aircraft that produces real-time wind profile estimates in a form that is usable for accurate trajectory estimation. The wind estimation algorithm is designed to process data that is of the form currently used in the Aircraft Meteorological Data Relay (AMDAR)-program. The algorithm combines a stochastic estimation based on this data and a traditional logarithmic estimator in order to be able to produce a valid estimation even when there are no data available from other aircraft.