A new trans-Atlantic route structure for strategic flight planning over the NAT airspace

Abstract

Air traffic across the North Atlantic airspace has witnessed an incessant increase over the last decades. However, the efficiency of transAtlantic air traffic management is still low nowadays due to the limited radar coverage. The availability of Automated Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast systems represents an opportunity to enhance the strategic flight planning over the oceans by reducing the separation standards. Besides, oceanic flights are subject to very strong winds. Flying wind-optimal route yields to a significant fuel and time savings. In this paper, we propose a new transAtlantic route structure that benefits from the jetstreams in order to construct windoptimal flight trajectories. Then, we introduce an optimization model for detecting and resolving conflicts. The analysis is carried out on 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 induced delays.