A comparison of two versions of the Aviation Digital Data Service pilot report decoder

Over the past several years a version of the Aviation Digital Data Service (ADDS) pilot report (PIREP) decoder has been used for the complex task of accurately deciphering the content of a PIREP. While this decoder provided an adequate interpretation of most of the available information in the reports, an upgrade was needed to provide better accuracy and include many reports that were previously considered incomplete. Among the upgrades is a data quality flag system designed to identify reports according to type of uncertainty. This study investigates how the upgrade to the decoder affects the overall number of reports that are successfully decoded as well as the accuracy of the decoding process. The results indicated that a larger number of reports are indeed adequately decoded. The reports that can not be decoded by the previous decoder but can be deciphered by the upgraded decoder are separated into categories by flag values and examined. The effects of the upgrade on overall verification statistics for a turbulence algorithm will also be presented.