The Calculation of Aircraft Collision Probabilities

Abstract

The basic limitation on air traffic compression, from the safety point of view, is the increased risk of collision due to reduced separations. In order to evolve new procedures, and eventually a fully automatic system, it is desirable to have a means of calculating the collision probability for any prescribed flight paths. This paper extends the statistical-probabilistic method of collision probability calculation, which has been limited to parallel, straight line flight paths, to arbitrary flight paths and vehicle shapes. The general formula is specialized to the cases of large relative velocity, nonzero relative velocity, zero relative velocity, and spherical collision surface. The formulas are applied to independent curved landing approaches to parallel runways.