Optimal civil aircraft missions exploiting free routing possibilities

¹ Student, Laboratory of Thermal Turbomachines, National Technical University of Athens, Iroon Polytechniou 9, 15780, Greece
² Professor, Laboratory of Thermal Turbomachines, National Technical University of Athens, Iroon Polytechniou 9, 15780, Greece
³ Assistant Professor, Laboratory of Thermal Turbomachines, National Technical University of Athens, Iroon Polytechniou 9, 15780, Greece
⁴ Research Associate, Laboratory of Thermal Turbomachines, National Technical University of Athens, Iroon Polytechniou 9, 15780, Greece

^* Corresponding author: kmathiou@mail.ntua.gr

Abstract

A method is presented for optimizing burnt fuel and flight time of civil aircraft missions, under the scope of a full-scale free route airspace implementation as well as usage of actual environmental data, focusing on ambient temperature and pressure. A computational analysis model, using online available aircraft data is considered, for flight envelopes defined by the user, is used as the base tool. The model is validated over real flight data, before it is used as the main tool for optimization of flight missions. Flight paths are analyzed by considering both their vertical and horizontal aspect. Optimal paths are derived, for each chosen mission, through an optimization process that takes advantage of the flexibilities that become available by implementation of Free Route Airspace. Vertical flight path is shown to play very important role in achieving optimal flights, while horizontal paths also offer optimality possibilities, with a strong dependence on weather conditions.