North Atlantic Aircraft Trajectory Optimization

Abstract

North Atlantic oceanic airspace accommodates air traffic between North America and Europe. Radar-based surveillance is not applicable in this vast and highly congested airspace. For conflict-free flight progress, the Organized Track System is established in North Atlantic, and flights are prescribed to follow pre-defined oceanic tracks. Rerouting of aircraft from one track to another is very rarely applied because of large separation standards. As a result, aircraft often follow routes that are not optimal in view of their departure and destination points. This leads to an increase in aircraft cruising time and congestion level in continental airspace at input and output. Implementing new technologies and airborne-based control procedures will enable significant decrease in the present separation standards and improvement of the traffic situation in North Atlantic.The aim of the present study is to show the benefits that can be expected from such a reduction of separation standards. Optimal conflict-free trajectories are constructed for several flight sets based on the new proposed separation standards, with respect to the flight input data and oceanic winds. This paper introduces a mathematical model; it proposes an optimization formulation of the problem; it constructs two test problems based on real air-traffic data, and it presents very encouraging results of simulations for these data. * Manuscript received ; revised † The authors are with ENAC,

Comparison Between Two Wind-Optimal Strategic Flight Plannings for North Atlantic Traffic

“…The same authors applied the Genetic Algorithm (GA) to resolve a similar optimization problem in [10] for the real flight data involving about 350 flights. Simulations showed that a conflict-free solution can be found only under the reduced separation norms which revealed benefits from operating the ADS-B.…”

Chapter 22: Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Optimization in Air Traffic Management: Aircraft Conflict Avoidance

“…A number of contributions also come from the related problem of conflict-free trajectory planning (i.e., finding trajectories such that aircraft are separated all along their path, a priori in long-term strategical planning or in tactical phases of flights). In [9,23] mixed-integer models are proposed for trajectory planning problems, that are solved through heuristic approaches. Interesting MINLP problems also come from mixed-integer optimal control models for conflict-free trajectories planning and conflicts resolution, where typical discretization steps lead to the solution of MINLP problems, see e.g.…”

“…Alternatively, some authors resort to heuristics [4,9,23], and are able to solve large instances, though obtaining feasible (if any) but not guaranteed global optimal solutions. More specifically, a Variable Neighborhood Search metaheuristic is proposed in [4], while a simulated annealing and, respectively, a genetic algorithm tailored to the problem are used in [9,23] for the related problem of trajectory planning. Finally, in [8], besides the exact solution of the whole MINLP, a heuristic is proposed, based on exact solutions of subproblems that are represented by clusters of conflicting aircraft.…”

A new trans-Atlantic route structure for strategic flight planning over the NAT airspace

“…This change can be a re-routing from the initial track, switching to another flight level or varying the Mach number. In [5], authors assumed that all aircraft are equipped with ADS-B systems. Thus, the reduced separation standards can be applied.…”