Abstract
A novel study is presented aiming at characterizing and illustrating potential enhancements in flight planning predictability due to the effects of wind uncertainty. A robust optimal control methodology is employed to calculate robust flight plans. Wind uncertainty is retrieved out of Ensemble Probabilistic Forecasts. Different wind approximation functions are compared, typifying errors, and illustrating its importance for accurate solving of the robust optimal control problem. A set of key performance indicators is defined for the quantification of uncertainty in terms of flight time and fuel consumption. Two different case studies are presented and discussed. The first one is based on a representative sample of the whole 2016 year for a single origin-destination and a forecast time step of 6 hours. As for the second, we select the most uncertain day together with a multiorigin-destination set of flights with forecast time steps up to 2 days.
Highlights
The Air Traffic Management (ATM) System is undergoing a paradigm shift aiming at enhancing its environmental impact, capacity, safety, and efficiency
All ATM system actors, including pilots, air traffic controllers, airlines, dispatchers, air navigation service providers, meteorological offices, and the network manager, are daily facing the effects of uncertainty
We focus on the output data of the global ensemble forecast system European Center for MediumRange Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Ensemble Prediction System (EPS)
Summary
The Air Traffic Management (ATM) System is undergoing a paradigm shift aiming at enhancing its environmental impact, capacity, safety, and efficiency. Should the capacity of the system be increased while maintaining high safety standards and improving the overall performance, uncertainty levels in ATM must be reduced and, when possible, find new strategies to deal with and eventually reduce it. It is well-known that the sector’s capacity is under-declared due to uncertain entry/occupancy counts, limiting the capacity of the system. Adding unnecessary fuel leads to a nonneglectable loss of efficiency, e.g., Hao et al in [1] conclude that 1 min in reducing flight time dispersion could save between $120 and $452 million per year only considering US domestic airlines
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