Defining dynamic route structure for airspace configuration

Abstract

This article describes a method for defining route structure from flight tracks. Individual merge and diverge intersections between pairs of flights are identified, clustered, and grouped into nodes of a route structure network. Links are placed between nodes to represent major traffic flows. A parametric analysis determined the algorithm input parameters producing route structures of current day flight plans that are closest to today's airway structure. These parameters are then used to define and analyse the dynamic route structure over the course of a day for current day flight paths. Route structures are also compared between current day flight paths and more user-preferred paths such as great circle and weather avoidance routing.

A graph-based approach to nominal terminal routing

“…Previous work defined route structure representing en-route traffic patterns by clustering individual flight trajectory intersections into nodes and then defining links between nodes [17]. Unique properties of terminal airspace, such as frequent turns and higher degree of precision required, made it difficult to directly apply the en-route technique to the terminal area.…”

Stochastic analysis of fuel consumption in aircraft cruise subject to along-track wind uncertainty

“…Among those, weather has perhaps the greatest impact. Its importance has been extensively assessed in the literature; thus, according to Zelinski and Jastrzebski [3] convective weather is identified as one of the ATM uncertainty factors that most seriously affect the network route structure, and thus the optimal flight trajectory planning.…”