Strategic planning of North Atlantic Oceanic air traffic based on a new wind-optimal route structure

• Main Authors: Dhief, Imen, Dougui, Nour Elhouda, Delahaye, Daniel, Hamdi, Noureddine
• Other Authors: Heterogeneous Advanced Networking and Applications Manouba (HANAlab), Université de la Manouba Tunisie (UMA)-École Nationale des Sciences de l'Informatique Manouba (ENSI), Université de la Manouba Tunisie (UMA), Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile (ENAC)
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2017
• Subjects: North Atlantic oceanic airspace; strategic flight planning; wind-optimal route structure; conflict detection and resolution; optimization model; [MATH.MATH-OC]Mathematics [math]/Optimization and Control [math.OC]; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://hal-enac.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01592231; https://hal-enac.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01592231/document; https://hal-enac.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01592231/file/ArticleATM.pdf

International audience Recently, air traffic is steadily increasing all over the world. Particularly, the air traffic over the North Atlantic airspace has witnessed an incessant increase. This increase was expected since it connects two densely-populated areas, namely North America and Europe. Otherwise, up to now the efficiency of trans-Atlantic flights is low due to the limited navigational equipment and radar coverage. The availability of Automated Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) systems represents a new opportunity to better the strategic planning of flights over the oceanic area by reducing the separation standards. Besides, oceanic flights are subject to very strong winds. Recently, several researches proved that flying wind-optimal route yields to a significant fuel and time savings for each flight. Thus, optimizing trans-Atlantic routes and providing reliable flight trajectories become a primordial issue for the oceanic air traffic management. In this paper, we propose a new trans-Atlantic route structure that benefits from the jet streams in order to construct windoptimal flight trajectories. First, we describe the methodology used to design our new route structure. Then, an optimization model for detecting and resolving conflicts is introduced. The analysis was carried out in real traffic data to prove the efficiency of the developed method. Experimental findings show that our approach provides encouraging results in terms of conflict resolution and time savings