Abstract
Air traffic trajectory optimization is a complex, multidimensional and non-linear optimization problem and requires a firm focus on the essential criteria. The criteria cover operational, economical, environmental, political, and social factors and differ from continent to continent. Since air traffic is a transcontinental transport system, the criteria may also change during a single flight. Historic flight track data allow observation and assess real flights, to extract essential criteria and to derive optimization strategies to increase air traffic efficiency. Real flight track data from the Chinese and European air traffic show significant differences in the routing structure in both regions. For that reason, reference trajectories of historic ADS-B 24-h air traffic data in China and Europe have been extracted and analyzed regarding horizontal flight efficiency and the most restrictive criteria of trajectory optimization. We found that prohibited areas might be the most powerful reason to describe deviations from the great circle distance in the Chinese air traffic system. Atmospheric conditions, network requirements, aircraft types and flight planning procedures are similar in China and Europe and only have a minor impact on flight efficiency during the cruise phase. In a multi-criteria trajectory optimization of the extracted reference trajectories considering the weather, operational constraints and prohibited areas, we found that flown ground distances could be reduced by 255 km in the Chinese airspace and 2.3 km in the European airspace. The resultant reference trajectories can be used for further analysis to increase the efficiency of continental air traffic flows.
Highlights
An efficient air traffic network results from the superposition of sophisticated air traffic flow control and optimal individual trajectories
This single trajectory optimization is going to be implemented in the framework of Trajectory Based Operations (TBO) as Reference Business Trajectory (RBT) until 2035, which was created by the Single European Sky (SES) Initiative [2]
Lateral path restrictions are defined in worldwide published route availability documents [4,5], available cruising pressure altitudes and aircraft mass constraints are regulated by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in Doc. 4444 (Procedures of Air Navigation Services, Air Traffic Management) [6]
Summary
An efficient air traffic network results from the superposition of sophisticated air traffic flow control and optimal individual trajectories. Campbell et al [26] extracted possible go-around criteria of landing aircraft by clustering historic flight track data and Sheridan et al [27] identified abnormal aircraft behaviors during the approach phase using the DBSCAN Cluster algorithm All these studies benefit from the advantage of DBSCAN as an unsupervised learning method. In 2001, ICAO recommended defining so-called Area Navigation (RNAV) trunk routes: In dense air spaces, aircraft are allowed to freely operate within a network of navigation beacons without navigating directly between these beacons, fulfilling a defined system capability [38] Adopting this idea of trunk routes, we extract historic reference trajectories as a result of the clustering algorithm.
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