PRC Data Challenge 2026
The Performance Review Commission (PRC), with the support of OpenSky Network (OSN), invites data scientists, aviation professionals and data analysts to collaborate and compete in a data challenge to develop innovative methodologies for benefit of the broader aviation community.
The aim is to do this through:
Using open data,
openly sharing final solutions (incl. code and documentation on a public GitHub repo),
publishing an open access paper about the implemented solution on Journal of Open Aviation Science (JOAS)
.
Data Challenge
The 2026 edition of the PRC Data Challenge invites participants to predict the taxi-out time of flights from 10 major European airports.
Scope
The learning dataset will consist of all 11 airport movements for the full year of 2025.
Ranking
The applied ranking will use Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) for submitted predictions for the movements in January and July 2026.
Timeline
The competition runs from the \(1^{st}\) of September 2026 up until the \(11^{th}\) of October 2026 23:59:59 CET.
Reward
The combined prize amount for the first 3 teams is 5000 EUR.
Terms & Conditions
Check the Terms & Conditions for eligibility for participation and prize before filling in the team creation request form.
We reserve the right to change the rules or even stop the challenge due to any circumstances.
Participate
Join the competition; request the creation of your team here!
Your request will be assessed by the PRC Data Challenge team for approval. Upon approval you will receive a verification email and, on successful reply, the relevant access keys to the datasets/buckets.
Note: The participation is open to all, but teams from sanctioned countries are excluded.
Outreach
We are strong advocates of open science and (strongly 😉) encourage teams, particularly the top-ranked teams, to submit a paper to JOAS describing their approach and the inner workings of their models.
Here are some examples from previous editions:
- Open Machine Learning Models for Actual Takeoff Weight Prediction
- A Physics-Guided Gradient Boosting Framework for Open-Source Aviation Fuel Estimation
We also publish a data paper describing the challenge dataset, with the aim of making the data more accessible and supporting further use in research, education, and other applications.
Examples from previous editions include:
- Aircraft Fuel Burn Estimation: The EUROCONTROL PRC 2025 Data Challenge
- Aircraft Takeoff Weight Estimation: The EUROCONTROL PRC 2024 Data Challenge
The following GitHub organizations host the repositories of participating teams:
- 2024 teams’ repos, https://github.com/prc-data-challenge-2024
- 2025 teams’ repos, https://github.com/prc-data-challenge-2025
List of Acronyms
JOAS: Journal of Open Aviation Science
OSN: OpenSky Network
PRC: Performance Review Commission
RMSE: Root Mean Square Error
Social Media Interactions & Forum
Join the conversation and stay up to date with the Data Challenge news and announcements on the OpenSky Network Discord channel
#prc-data-competition.Note: you need to have access to the OpenSky Network Discord server first.