Manual preparation of WSDRS-FAA data

Owned by Noreen Dertinger
Last updated: Aug 03, 2023
2 min read

Manual tasks to perform if the batch file does not work for you or anybody on the team:

 

 

Note: Never download from the FIXED WIDTH section of the page, the FAA code introduced an error causing corruption on these files, sometime in 2017. FAA SDR management is aware of the issue.

Download the Tab Delimited Data sdr zip files (lower list of files on the screen) for the last 5 years from Aviation Safety (AVInfo) Data Categories

unzip the zip files:

concatenate the zip files to create DATA.TXT

type sd*.txt > DATA.TXT

 

Delete the unneeded zip and txt files.

DEL SD*.TXT
DEL SD*.ZIP

 

Character replacements

AMPERSAND

& BECOMES PLUS SIGN +

AMPERSAND

& BECOMES PLUS SIGN +

QUOTE

' BECOMES BACKPICK (Accent Grave)

DOUBLE QUOTE

" BECOMES BACKPICK (Accent Grave)

SEMICOLON

; BECOMES COMMA

VERTICAL BAR

| BECOMES SPACE/BLANK

SQUARE BRACKET

[ BECOMES ROUND BRACKET (

SQUARE BRACKET

] BECOMES ROUND BRACKET )

DOUBLE SPACE

BECOMES SINGLE SPACE (this is just to reduce file size - do this 3-4 times)


Save the DATA.TXT file to c:\DATA\FAA


Open the DATA.TXT file in excel

These three steps are the quickest way to open the DATA.TXT the same way the batch file does:

  • Go to a command prompt (does not have to be as an admin).

  • cd \Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16

  • run the command: excel C:\DATA\FAA\DATA.TXT

 

The data in DATA.txt will now look similar to this. Notice the ENTRY_DATE is our leftmost value.