Aircraft
Aircraft path simulation
Taxi along a drawn centreline with nose-gear, cockpit or custom tracking. Select several aircraft for a group path, or read the type from a field.
Desktop GIS · Community edition
Tractrix for QGIS
The complete OpenAirside toolset as QGIS Processing algorithms. Draw a line, choose an aircraft, and get the swept envelope, clearance envelope, tracks, animated footprints and every issue — on real map layers, in any projected CRS.
At a glanceAvailable now
- Version
- 0.2.0
- QGIS
- 3.34 LTR to 4.x, Qt5 and Qt6
- Platforms
- Windows, macOS, Linux
- Tools
- 10 Processing algorithms
- Library
- 388 aircraft, 14 ground vehicles
- Licence
- GPL-2.0-or-later, free
- Price
- Free (Community plan)
Processing toolbox → Tractrix
Ten tools, one consistent set of outputs.
Every manoeuvre tool writes the same five layers — envelopes, tracks, footprints, poses and issues — so styles, models and reports work across tools. Tools also appear on the Tractrix menu and toolbar.
Aircraft
Pushback / towing
Reverse pushback with the main gear on the line, or forward tow. Towbar or towbarless tug, nose-wheel angle checked against the tow limit.
Aircraft
Turning radii and 180° turn
R1–R6 radii as in manufacturer airport planning manuals, and the minimum pavement width for a 180° turn, optionally drawn on the map.
Aircraft
Jet blast contours
Idle, breakaway and take-off contours at any velocities, at stands or swept along a path, plus engine intake hazard areas.
Stands and aprons
Stand design
Taxi in along lead-in lines, park, draw the Annex 14 clearance zone and stop bars, and flag conflicts with neighbours and obstacles.
Airside design
Taxiway fillet / required pavement
Cockpit over centreline, outer main-gear swath plus wheel-to-edge margin; the fillet is what the existing pavement lacks.
Airside design
Envelope separation
Minimum distance between envelopes of different runs, such as aircraft on parallel taxiways, with the shortest line drawn.
Ground vehicles
GSE / vehicle path
Tugs, baggage trains, loaders, fuel, buses and ARFF with steering lock and trailer articulation; jack-knife warning above 90°.
Libraries
Aircraft and vehicle tables
Export the 388-type aircraft library, filtered by ICAO code letter or text, and the 14-vehicle GSE library as tables.
Outputs
Layers you can style, query and animate.
Outputs are ordinary QGIS vector layers in the working CRS, styled by an element category on load. Footprints carry a timestamp, so the Temporal Controller plays the manoeuvre, and a height_m field for extrusion in QGIS 3D.
Geographic input (EPSG:4326 and similar) is computed in the local UTM zone automatically.
| Layer | Geometry | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| Envelopes | Polygon | Swept and clearance envelopes; gear, engine and tug swaths |
| Tracks | Line | Nose gear, cockpit, outer main-gear tyres, wingtips, tail, engines |
| Footprints | Polygon | Body outline every N metres with time, heading and steering |
| Poses | Point | Reference point at every sample, steering angle and limit check |
| Issues | Polygon | Steering exceedance, edge-margin breach, obstacle conflict |
| Report | HTML | Optional report; summary also returned as JSON |
Demo project
Try it on a deliberately imperfect airport.
The repository ships sample_data/demo_airport.qgz with the outputs of every tool already computed. It contains:
- a taxiway with two 45 m turns and no fillets;
- an apron with four stands, S2 and S3 deliberately too close for code C;
- a pushback route and a baggage-train route.
Planning aid
Tractrix is a planning aid, not a certified design tool. The kinematic model ignores tyre scrub, differential thrust and braking; geometry beyond the FAA database dimensions is estimated; jet blast is an empirical estimate. Check critical designs against the manufacturer's airport planning manual.
Algorithm IDs
Scripts and models call the tools as openairside:aircraft_path, openairside:pushback_tow, openairside:turning_analysis, openairside:jet_blast, openairside:stand_design, openairside:fillet_design, openairside:envelope_separation, openairside:vehicle_path, openairside:aircraft_library and openairside:vehicle_library. They are unchanged by the Tractrix rename.
Install in two minutes.
Download the ZIP and use Plugins → Manage and Install Plugins → Install from ZIP. No additional Python packages.