Analysis of Lateral Flight Inefficiency in Global Air Traffic Management

Abstract

Making the Air Traffic Management (ATM) system more efficient is a significant area of interest for reducing the environmental impact of aviation. ATM inefficiencies can be present for a number of reasons, including airspace structure (e.g. standard routes and flight levels); airspace restrictions (e.g. military training areas); conflict avoidance (e.g. to keep aircraft separated from each other and adverse weather); and airspace congestion. More efficient ATM that reduces some of these constraints would allow aircraft to fly closer to their optimal trajectories and hence lower the fuel burn and associated emissions of any given flight. In order to analyse these effects, this paper develops inefficiency metrics that quantify how far from the shortest lateral trajectory aircraft currently fly. These metrics are developed for different flight phases and geographic regions by using operational flight data to determine the levels and sources of inefficiency. This study links into the wider Aviation Integrated Modelling project that will permit policy options targeted on the environmental impact of air transportation (such as ATM evolution strategies) to be analysed in the local and global domains. These findings help inform and prioritise design aspects of ATM evolutions (such as the European SESAR and United States NextGen programmes) that affect environmental performance.