Abstract
The increase in air traffic worldwide requires improvement of flight operational efficiency. This study aims to reveal the potential benefits, namely, savings on fuel consumption and flight time, which are expected for Japanese airspace, by statistically evaluating the operational efficiency defined by average differences of fuel consumption, flight time, and flight distance between the original and the optimized flight of domestic flights in Japan. The aircraft position and time data used in this study were obtained from Collaborative Actions for Renovation of Air Traffic Systems Open Data—the radar data released by the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau. Flight information, such as air data and fuel flow, is estimated by applying meteorological data and aircraft performance model to the position information of radar data. Each reconstructed trajectory is optimized in terms of flight fuel consumption and flight time with an assumed cost index (CI). Dynamic programming is used as the trajectory optimization method. The flight fuel consumption and flight time of the optimized flight are compared with the original values to evaluate the operational efficiency. Herein, approximately one-third of 1-day data, i.e., 1087 cases of four aircraft types, are analyzed with reasonable CI settings. Our research findings suggest that flight fuel consumption and flight distance can be saved by 312 kg and 19.7 km, respectively, on average for the object flights. Following a statistical comparison between the original and the optimized flights, it was observed that two types of features, namely, flying on a detoured path and flying with nonoptimal altitude and speed in the cruise phase, are major factors which deteriorate the total operational efficiency in terms of fuel consumption, flight time, and flight distance.
Highlights
With regard to the significant increase in air traffic worldwide, by 2027, Japanese air traffic is expected to increase by half of that recorded in 2005 [1]
This research reveals the potential benefits which mean savings on fuel consumption and flight time expected in the case of Japanese airspace, by evaluating the quantified operational efficiency for the purpose of gaining knowledge that can be utilized for realizing trajectory-based operation (TBO)
Flight parameter estimation and four-dimensional flight trajectory optimization were applied to CARATS Open Data for calculating the fuel consumption
Summary
With regard to the significant increase in air traffic worldwide, by 2027, Japanese air traffic is expected to increase by half of that recorded in 2005 [1]. This research reveals the potential benefits which mean savings on fuel consumption and flight time expected in the case of Japanese airspace, by evaluating the quantified operational efficiency for the purpose of gaining knowledge that can be utilized for realizing TBO. In Japan, the ATM research group in Kyushu University evaluated the achievable potential benefits of the Japanese air traffic system Some of their works in which actual operational data were used are described below. The data are described as “CARATS Open Data” or “Open Data.” These data contain larger error than GPS data because of the measurement performance of radars; these data are the most appropriate to evaluate overall operational efficiency in Japan because they contain surveillance information of all the aircraft flying throughout the Japanese airspace in keeping with the instrument flight rule (IFR). This research is expected to aid examination of the measures in R&D of CARATS by demonstrating the factors that may lead to bottlenecks in improving the operational efficiency by TBO
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