Oceanic Traffic Optimization

• Main Authors: M. Sbihi, O. Rodionova, D. Delahaye, M. Mongeau
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.635.1901; http://hal-enac.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/01/02/27/46/PDF/Sbihi_ISIATM2012.pdf

The North Atlantic (NAT) is the busiest oceanic airspace in the world. In its most part, Air Traffic Services (ATS) radar surveillance is unavailable and typical procedures have been estab-lished in order to ensure safe navigation. Aircraft wish to follow what is called the minimum-time route that depends on the position of the jet stream. Generally the preferred east-west trajec-tories lie further north than the west-east ones. So all USA-Europe flights, for instance, want to follow roughly the same route which is not possible. In order to accommodate as many flights as possible on, or close to, their minimum time tracks and to provide the best traffic control service, a system of tracks referred to as the Organized Track System (OTS) is constructed [1]. The OTS is set up on a diurnal basis is built according to the position of the jet stream. The USA-Europe network is located on the jet stream and the Europe-USA network avoid it. Each network consists of a set, typically 4 to 7, of parallel or nearly parallel tracks (see Figure 1). Figure 1: Track network on North Atlantic Ocean The separation is maintained with respect to three dimensions: Vertical: 1000 feet (1ft ' 0.30 m). Lateral: the distance between closest tracks is 60 NM. Longitudinal: the time separation between subsequent aircraft following the same track is 10 minutes. When an aircraft want to shift from one track to an adjacent track, the separation must be at least 15 minutes with aircraft located on such adjacent track (see